ROUND 1: INTERFACE FUSS
HOTMAIL: If Hotmail’s latest incarnation, Windows Live Hotmail, looks familiar, that’s because it borrows many features from Microsoft Outlook, including a reading pane that lets you preview your mail without opening a new page. However, Hotmail still treats each reply as a separate e-mail, which will make your inbox unnecessarily cluttered.
GMAIL: Gmail may look primitive next to Hotmail’s fancy drop-down menus, but don’t let its clean, simple interface fool you. Its bare-bones approach makes Gmail faster to load and, by grouping replies into “conversations” like threads on a message board, Gmail brings continuity to e-mail where there was none before.
It may take some time to get used to at first, but Gmail’s “conversation view” keeps e-mail in context. Gmail is first out of the gate!
SCORE: HOTMAIL – 0
GMAIL – 1
ROUND 2: OPTIMUM ORGANIZATION
HOTMAIL: Webmail is only as good as it is organized. With Hotmail, you can drag-and-drop messages into folders to sort e-mails by subject, although each message can only be in one folder at a time.
GMAIL: On the other hand, Gmail uses “Labels” instead of folders, which means you can add multiple descriptive tags to a single message. What’s more, you can set up filters to automatically assign tags to incoming messages, so you’ll never have to manually sort e-mails again!
This point has Gmail’s name “labelled” all over it! Hotmail’s flame fizzles out.
SCORE: HOTMAIL – 0
GMAIL – 2
ROUND 3: PERSONAL PUNCH
HOTMAIL: Hotmail is king when it comes to personalization. Not only does Hotmail provide more fonts and emoticons to personalize messages, it also allows users to select one of eight layout colour schemes!
GMAIL: Meanwhile, Gmail users can use RSS feeds to deliver blog and news updates from their favourite sites straight to their inboxes. Other than that, Gmail doesn’t get too personal.
Hotmail turns red to knock out Gmail and snags its first point! Things are starting to heat up again…
SCORE: HOTMAIL – 1
GMAIL – 2
ROUND 4: SPACE RACE
HOTMAIL: It wasn’t too long ago that Hotmail gave users a paltry 2 megabytes (MB) of space, forcing people to delete e-mails and attachments on a regular basis just to make space for incoming messages! Today, each account can store up to 5000 MB and send attachments of up to 10 MB.
GMAIL: Gmail was born out of the promise that users would never have to delete anything ever again. When it began beta testing in 2004, users had up to 1000 MB of storage capacity. Since then, that number has climbed to over 6549 MB with more bytes being added every second! Plus, Gmail lets you attach twice as much data as Hotmail to a single message.
This round is no contest. Gmail rockets into “space”, leaving Hotmail behind. Gmail scores!
SCORE: HOTMAIL – 1
GMAIL – 3
ROUND 5: AD NAUSEAM
HOTMAIL: You get what you pay for and since both Hotmail and Gmail are free, they don’t come without a drawback: advertisements. Hotmail uses large, flashy ads that distract you from your mail and slow down loading times. Worst of all, Hotmail embeds a link at bottom of every e-mail you send like “R U Ready for Windows Live Messenger Beta 8.5? Try it today!” Hey, Hotmail, R U Ready to leave us alone?!
GMAIL: Gmail has ads too, but it only employs relevant, non-invasive text ads without images. As a result, most people won’t even notice them floating off to the side and there’s no forced tagline at the bottom of your messages.
Hotmail can’t conquer “ad”versity. Gmail wins the final point!
SCORE: HOTMAIL – 1
GMAIL – 4
ROUND UP: Next to Gmail, Hotmail looks like “Coldmail”. Microsoft’s e-mail service may have dominated the webmail wars of the late 1990s, but Gmail has changed what people have come to expect from a free e-mail provider: a more innovative interface, better organization, more space, and less advertising. It’s not rocket science. It’s Gmail.
Web Links:
www.hotmail.com
www.gmail.com