Re: Web vs. Desktop based systems

On Fri, 25 May 2007 16:40:15 +0100, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:

On 25 May 2007 07:07:23 -0700
gabrielvdk@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Hi All,

At the moment I have to graduate for my master in Business Information
Management and need to do a survey for my thesis. The thesis is about
Web vs. Desktop based applications and the differences perceived by the
user. So not from the management/technology point of view but from the
end-user. I focus now on Desktop vs. Webmail and need a whole lot

Unfortunately the survey does not touch on one of the most
important differences between web based and desktop email systems. With
a web based system all the data is held at the service provider and
subject to their limits and whims, if they go out of business it is
presumably all lost. With a desktop all the data is held on the user's
own machine.

It's more comjplex than that: IMAP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAP

generally assumes that mail will be left on the provider's servers (until
explicitly deleted from them), to be accessed either by a desktop client
or via a web interface. In addition, many (most?) desktop mail clients
(eg. Thunderbird) will provide the option to download (copies of) your
IMAP mail to your local machine.

Also, many POP-based mail systems:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Office_Protocol

will (if used with some email clients) allow copies of your mail to be
left on the server when downloaded locally... and some web-based services
allow POP access.

Personally I prefer to keep my data on my systems where I can
decide how much to keep and how safe to keep it. The flipside is that if
I want to get at it when I am not near my machines I have to make
arrangements to do so.

Using one of the arrangements described above you get the best of both
worlds - copies of your mail both locally and on the provider's servers.

Personally, I use an IMAP mail service but also download copies of my
mail to my desktop machine(s). In addition (call me paranoid if you
like...), I've arranged that a copy of every mail sent or received by me
is dispatched to an archive account on the Great Gmail In The Sky.

--
Lionel B
.

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