Ever since Google announced that you can start accessing your Gmail offline using Google Gears, some section of the web community has been going gaga over it. I fail to understand what’s the big deal about the new Offline Gmail. It has been there for years…. in a slightly different form though.
The biggest drawback of web-based email such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail is that they don’t work when users are offline. However some email providers do support offline email access by enabling the standard POP3 or IMAP protocols. Gmail has been providing support for both these protocols for a long time now thereby allowing its users to download their email to their email client of choice such as Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird.
Offline POP access to Yahoo Mail used to be free till one point of time when Yahoo decided to charge users for using the POP facility. Subsequently, strangely enough Yahoo Mail provides free POP access to only those using international versions of Yahoo Mail, that is for those email addresses which do not end in @yahoo.com. Recently all Yahoo Mail users were given the option to download email offline by using its own proprietary Zimbra mail client.
Microsoft Hotmail has also announced only recently that they will start providing free POP3 access to its email users, a move which has probably come too late to prevent its users from abandoning the use of Hotmail.
Gmail vs Outlook : Web based email vs Offline email
This is a question that many users find asking themselves. Is web based Gmail (or for that matter Yahoo Mail or Hotmail) better than downloading mail offline to an email client such as Outlook or Thunderbird ? There is no fixed answer to this question and it would depend on the manner you use email.
If you are accessing your email from only one computer then probably offline client based POP email is best for you. But if you need to access your email from more than one computer then you need to use web based email. That’s what Cloud Computing is all about.
Using the IMAP protocol gives you the best of both worlds because you can not only store your email on the web so as to access it from any computer, but you can also download a copy to your computer for offline use. The same result can also be obtained by using the POP3 protocol by ensuring that the option “Leave copy on server” is enabled.
What’s Different in Offline Gmail
Gmail’s new offline feature will allow users to handle their email within the familiar Gmail interface, with automatic synchronisation of changes when an Internet connection is available. Google’s Rajen Sheth says, “We wanted to, with Gears, make it a seamless experience so that users don’t have to download a specialized client or go through a different experience than what they’re used to with the Web browser.”
Conclusion
We find Offline Gmail redundant because we already have email clients like Outlook and Thunderbird that have been doing the same thing more efficiently for a long time now. Gmail has long offered offline support through standard POP and IMAP interfaces, enabling users to download their Gmail to their email client of choice, both on the computer and on the mobile.
So I am still puzzled as to why everyone is going gaga over this new “experimental feature”? We have had it for years!
Hi. my problem is composing e-mail letter on line it take so much time and I loose points with my IP . would like to have off line system where I can consume plenty of time .I have nothing but prise for google organisation they are the best educators in entire world ..sign požar slavic for blaze