Email Solution

[Smileyguy]

Howdy everyone, I'm looking for a bit of practical advice on email. I have some specific needs and wants and am looking for an ideal solution.

- Firstly, I need lot's of space. I get's lots of emails with Word and image attachements.

- Secondly, I'd like a way that I can have a few different email accounts all coming to the same place. Ideally I would like if each account directed to Mail, for instance, but nonetheless went into separate folders, so for example, I could check my 'pleasure' mail but not my work mail if I wanted.

- I really like Gmail. The 'conversation' management system would be very useful to me I feel, as I get large quantities of mail and would find it useful to be bale to track back through conversations easily.

- Then again I always like the .mac system of being able setup extra addresses and then delete them if they are a source of spam. I also like having a few different email addresses for different uses.

So I feel at the moment as if I'm between .Mac and GMail. I like the way GMail organises mail, but I also like .Mac for the reasons outlined above, and for the storage space provided. So I'm looking for some general advice on how I could best manage my mail, and have a couple of specific questions...

1. Any thoughts on which email account is better, .Mac or Gmail? This is my crux question really. I know one is free and one isn't, but if .Mac is better I don't mind paying.
2. What's the advantage of using Apple's Mail program?
3. Are the features of the GMail accoount (i.e conversations) maintained in Mail?
4. Any other email services I should look at apart from these?

Sorry for babbling so much. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Blackheart]

1. Any thoughts on which email account is better, .Mac or Gmail? This is my crux question really. I know one is free and one isn't, but if .Mac is better I don't mind paying.
2. What's the advantage of using Apple's Mail program?
3. Are the features of the GMail accoount (i.e conversations) maintained in Mail?
4. Any other email services I should look at apart from these?

Sorry for babbling so much. Any help is greatly appreciated.

1. Haven't really used .Mac much, couldn't tell ya.
2. You can use Apple's Mail program with Gmail. It's just a POP/SMTP program that interfaces with your Gmail account.
3. Haven't checked out the conversations feature in Gmail... what does it do? Apple's Mail does threading so it groups emails with *usually* the same subject line or if it can tell that certain email have been going "back and forth" or whatever.
4. Gmail is fine for me. Set it up in Mail and give it a try there and see if it will do what you need.


See this link for Gmail setup

 

[Smileyguy]

1. Haven't really used .Mac much, couldn't tell ya.
2. You can use Apple's Mail program with Gmail. It's just a POP/SMTP program that interfaces with your Gmail account.
3. Haven't checked out the conversations feature in Gmail... what does it do? Apple's Mail does threading so it groups emails with *usually* the same subject line or if it can tell that certain email have been going "back and forth" or whatever.
4. Gmail is fine for me. Set it up in Mail and give it a try there and see if it will do what you need.


See this link for Gmail setup

Hi Blackheart, thanks for the response. I know Mail is just a POP/SMTP program, but pretend I'm really stupid and tell me what's the advantage of using this over just logging on to a net account.

Also, does Mail have any special features that make it useful for organising Mail? Is SmartFolders useful, or just a gimmick?

By the 'conversations' feature, I meant the way all emails in the same discussion were threaded together. I think 'conversation' was a word Google were using to promote it.

Thanks for the help.

 

[DeSnousa]

Much better at organising, smart folder those likes. Does it with ease, alerts you when a new message is in compared to reloading. It is with you whether logged onto the net or not.

It just easier because it an app designed for email not a browser.

 

[mkrishnan]

With respect to Mail.app, you can easily view separate inboxes separately, as long as they're actually separate accounts at Mail's level... but I'm not sure, with .Mac, exactly how that works out. My impression is that you can set up one e-mail address as a .Mac account in Mail, and the others separately with POP or IMAP, but that if you just set up all the accounts with commas in the .Mac account, they will only have one mailbox between them.

What I mean is, in my case, for instance, I have four mailboxes -- two separate university accounts, GMail, and Hotmail, all of which have separate POP/IMAP servers (except for Hotmail, which is checked using a special plugin and a protocol called httpmail). But for instance, when I had Yahoo e-mail auto forwarded to my university address, although it showed up in the inbox with my yahoo e-mail in the "To" box, it does not have its own mailbox, like it would if I got the mail directly from Yahoo via POP or IMAP.

Does that make sense at all?

 

[Blackheart]

I prefer using a mail program on my computer, than using a web browser to check my mail because all I have to do is open the mail program (or even keep it open all the time) and I'll receive my new mail. I just think logging in via a web browser is too cumbersome.

Using a mail program, you can more easily manage your mail into folders if need be. You can also easily apply rules to mail; so that when it hits your inbox it just continues on to a pre-specified folder depending on content.

 

[neocell]

By the 'conversations' feature, I meant the way all emails in the same discussion were threaded together. I think 'conversation' was a word Google were using to promote it.

In mail other messages tied to each other (ie replies back and forth) get highlighted when you click on one of them, but they do not come up in the same widow pane as in Gmail, you would have to look for each highlighted message and then click on it.