Comments on: Are desktop email clients dead?

By: Technology Links - 04/18/2007

Technology Links - 04/18/2007 — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 20:12:15 +0000

[...] GizBuzz tries to decide if Desktop E-mail clients are dead. [...]

By: Lee

Lee — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:35:12 +0000

I personally haven’t used an email client for years, I find it far easier to just open up my customised google home page, and have all my email, RSS, and basically everything listed there for me to see, rather than having to clog down my PC with individual applications for my tasks.

The gmail mobile phone client, which I have on my phone, looks very promising, one of the things holding stuff like this though I would say is mobile internet costs, it just costs too much to use it regularly, unless you are on a contract.

By: Huw

Huw — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:59:55 +0000

Mobiles are also interesting - blackberries are extremely popular, certainly in the UK business environment, and I discovered just the other day that my middle of the road phone can do imap email, updating every minute automatically. As mobile data costs go down, and the technology becomes cheaper, more and more email will be on the phone.

Having said that, I very much agree with your conclusions - desktop apps are an institution in businesses (many of which will have an extremely conservative IT strategy). They are seen as easier to defend against virus attacks, and many businesses will not allow access to webmail from their systems at all. GAYD may, however, become an increasingly attractive proposition, given its cost and web 2.0 flavoured power. In 10 years I think businesses will have moved mainly to webmail, but I don’t think that change will happen quickly.