The dilemma of using GMail as your primary client
July 5th, 2004 Leave a comment Visited 25 times, 1 so far today
GMail Client from Google
I don’t know why, but this Blog is churning out a lot of posts on GMail! So here is another one. It turned out that I switched all non-personal mails to GMail (that means 99% of the mails I get!). And it happened so, that I had this important document mailed to me on GMail that I needed a printout of. Now being a poor bloke that I am without a Printer, I had to venture into the amazing world of cyber cafes of this town. Cafes with uncles and aunties with little knowledge of what they are running. Luckily, the café I went to was in Delhi with an uncle with some knowledge. But he was running the good old Windows 98 on his system. Now if you have any remembrance of that Operating System out of the box, you remember it comes equipped with Internet Explorer 5. And this browser version is unfortunately not supported by GMail!
What a great feeling. You cannot access a site in INTERNET EXPLORER! And it was not exactly a surprise that their was no Firefox available on that system. I tried downloading it, but alas the download speeds of 2KBps made me thought otherwise. I contacted a reliable friend on Yahoo! Messenger, told him to access my GMail and forward that mail to my Yahoo! Mail account. That finally enabled me to get that document printed out!
So much so for my liking for GMail. Anyone with freshly installed Windows 98 (Windows ME with IE 5.5 is supported I believe) is stranded without access to GMail! Think about that…
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July 18th, 2004 at 04:06 am
Anyone still running 98 or ME (god help them), shouldn’t even be on the Net! Gmail rules!
October 25th, 2004 at 05:36 am
“Anyone still running 98 or ME (god help them), shouldn’t even be on the Net!”
Very intelligent comment. I’m sure the people in third world countries, developing nations, and even a majority of our public schools here in the US would be happy to hear you say that. I’m sure they would also be happy to have you fund the new hardware costs and software upgrades, since most of their equipment is donated or second, even third hand, and won’t run a whole lot more then 98 or ME.
I’ll save you from saying your next comment.
“The why don’t those idiots just put linux on them, it would run great!!! GMAIL RULEZ!!!!”
Because in most places they are teachers without an IT department to help, and they are overworked as it is without them trying to learn a new trade. Developing and third world countries have enough to worry about getting decent medicqal drugs and dealing with civil wars without getting dragged into our corporate battles.
The good thing about you’re comment though. It shows even the dumbest of people can still get on the net and post a comment to a discussion board.
November 3rd, 2004 at 05:33 pm
What a way to criticize! Gmail has no support for IE5! People who won’t use IE5 won’t use gmail; what’s up with this? Remember; gmail is not a public service that the government provides and all citizens have equal rights on.
Besides that; the fact that gmail supports Firefox prefectly (or vice versa) shows that gmail is not missing a point; but IE5 surely is.If I’ll be late for work if I take the bus; then I’ll take a cab. This is what gmail’s doing. They are not claiming to support all current and obsolete platforms; this is a take it or leave it situation.
TeaTime’s excellent point of dumbness just amazed me. OK, teatime, I’m fine with my win3.1, and gmail should support it. My country has no money to spare on winXP’s and no intelligent geeks for linux. What should I do then?
The world is changing. User habits need to change too. gmail is an innovation, it is not a food-for-the-poor campaign. It’s tomorrow’s technology, and if you prefer to or are forced to live in yesterday’s world, there is nothing to do. Technology after tomorrow won’t support gmail either. It depends on you to follow technology (not microsoft’s service packed craps) or not.
November 3rd, 2004 at 09:24 pm
Mindblitz,
I agree 100% with your thoughts on Gmail being very innovative and not a food for the poor campaign. I personally think the service is great. I was more commenting on the first idiots comment on how people with older technology shouldn’t even be on the Net.
Without turning it into tooooo much of a social commentary though, it is interesting to note, that the people who could benefit most from these types of service (ie, the poor, underdevloped countries students, etc…) in alot of cases won’t be able to afford adequate hardware and software to run it (even though it is a web app!)
I think that trend (thin client, but it has to be a new thin client :) is probably going to become more the norm, which is going to cut alot of people out of the loop.
Thank God though that all the self professed tech experts and geeks out there (which I would probably classify myself as) have GMail, even though we all probably have about twenty different addreses to begin with.
To me, I like the interface, I like the idea, wish it took more into consideration on the technology front to be truly innovative, but all in all, I don’t foresee it as anything that is going to be more then just one more place spam collects, and one more place that I’ll end up checking once a month (like most of our 5 different hotmail, yahoo, etc… web accounts)
November 3rd, 2004 at 10:52 pm
firefox comes to the rescue, doesn’t it? :)
March 13th, 2005 at 01:35 pm
I don’t see the problem, update to internet explorer 6, the OS isn’t the problem here, it’s the browser. Internet Explorer 6 is still provided for Windows 98. You can’t blame gmail for using the latest browser that you can update anyway, you can blame them for making their notify system for only windows XP and such. ^_^ Though to solve that problem I got mailnotifer, a program that you can either pay for to check more then two mail accounts or you can use the free version which only checks two mail accounts. *shrugs* Since I only use gmail anyway, no problem there. As for those people who insist on insulting those who use windows 98 or other OS systems at all. May your narrow minds broaden, and if they don’t ah well just don’t bug anyone else with them. Some people in this world don’t have enough money to buy a new windows OS, but even more people don’t have enough money to buy or upgrade their system so that their computer can even use Windows XP.
April 15th, 2005 at 01:10 pm
What the hell … i hav win 98 as my OS and i use gmail just like ne other mail … just download IE 5.5 or IE 6 … ( but now gmail supports all te IE’s 4+ ) so win 98 and Gmail can rule together …
April 29th, 2005 at 01:55 am
first of all, tEA-TiME is an idiot. maybe you should reassess your life (and come to the conclusion that you should end it immediately)
second of all, the author should edit the post. gmail now supports a crapload of browsers with its light version that uses minimal javascript.
third of all, everyone suck it.
May 3rd, 2005 at 03:24 am
I work in a CyberCafe myself, and although we use Windows 98 SE, we have the upgraded broswer and also use firefox on them. Gmail rocks and I would not want to be left without it, since we have like 2 gigs of space now! It would have been the cybercafes fault for not looking after their computers as they are meant to be looked after.
May 31st, 2005 at 02:24 pm
Excuse me. I run Win98 and Linux on my system. Gmail, firefox, thunderbird all work wonderfully. I rarely use IE, except for the sites that will not allow you to use any browser.
More than likely that cybercafe had something set up wrong.
BTW if you are wondering why I do not have XP. The computers at work use it and they are so sluggish (Its not the processors and ram) I am holding out as long as I can.
May 31st, 2005 at 03:02 pm
I hope you noticed that this post is dated: 05th Jul 2004
September 30th, 2005 at 01:39 am
GMail problems on old computer fixed by Firefox!
GMail didn’t work on an old computer with Windows 98 & Internet Explore 6. We could receive mail but could not send which was outrageously annoying. I downloaded Firefox with a faint hope and it works! Hail Firefox!!
November 14th, 2005 at 10:45 pm
I use Windows ME and IE supported Gmail but the newer versions can be downloaded from Windows Updates