Tip: E-mail Clients

Similar to browsers as mentioned in a previous tip, e-mail client applications also evolved a lot in last few years. We spend lot of time on e-mail and even a small productivity improvement is welcome.

I will briefly highlight some improvements I noticed recently in different e-mail clients.

Outlook Web Access: Outlook 2003 web access is significant improvement compared to earlier versions. This is almost similar to Outlook Desktop version and provides easier navigation and experience. I loved it when I moved to the newer version.

Outlook Desktop: Next to Outlook Web access, accessing work e-mail accounts using Outlook Desktop is more popular. This is possible only after connecting to Office network using VPN. A particular combination of Outlook Exchange Server and Windows XP makes it possible to access e-mail server without establishing a VPN connectivity. This is also a signficant improvement in productivity and I continue to use this very effectively

Yahoo E-mail Beta: New Yahoo mail aims to provide a better navigation on folders. With features like drag and drop, opening e-mails in tabs within one browser window yahoo is definitely becoming better.

Google Mail: Google mail has very simple navigation and nice features to create labels, archive messages. Google became popular by offering more space than other free e-mail providers, but there are some nice features in gmail also.

HotMail: Hotmail also upgraded its web e-mail interface by providing e-mail client that matches outlook web access interface.

I am sure there are many other e-mail clients out there that are competing to provide better features to improve productivity.

Explore your e-mail application to handle e-mail more efficiently.