For many of us, email has become essential to our everyday life. How you handle your email is often as important as how your handle your bills. Sometimes there is some confusion regarding the process.
If you are reading your email with Outlook or Outlook Express, you are likely using POP mail. If you logged into your email account by visiting a website (such as Hotmail.com, Gmail.com, or Yahoo.com), you are using Webmail. With POP mail, you download your messages off your email server and they are stored locally on your computer. With Webmail you are looking at your emails while they are sitting on the email server. These emails are never stored on your local computer.
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POP mail Advantages |
POP mail Disadvantages |
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- You can read and write email even if you are disconnected from the Internet
- Reading and organizing your email is quick and responsive because your computer is handling the process
- There is no limit to the number of emails you can save |
- You have to trust yourself to backup your email regularly (if your hard drive goes poof, then poof go your emails)
- You have to manage the configuration of your email accounts |
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Webmail Advantages |
Webmail Disadvantages |
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- You can be anywhere in the world and log into your email
- No configuration of your accounts is required
- Another company takes care of and backs up your email (Yahoo, Google, and MSN take serious steps to backup your data) |
- Webmail services always have a storage limit
- You are trusting another company to take care of and backup your email
- You rely on the speed of your Internet connection when browsing, organizing, and reading your messages
- You need to remember your password |
Recommendations? Sometimes a combination of both works well. Most Webmail services will still allow you to use Outlook or Outlook Express to download your messages. It is simply not an option anymore to go without some kind of backup routine – in many cases, emails provide a record and archive of our lives.
