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5 Features Gmail has that Outlook.com Doesn't

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PCQ Bureau
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Bangalore:

Google announced on June 28
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2012 that Gmail has a whopping 425 million active users,

putting it

way past Microsoft's Hotmail service, which stands at 325

million

users (
href="http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/28/gmail-hotmail-yahoo-email-users/">Source).

Gmail

usage is growing at an explosive rate, and Microsoft has been

forced into action to keep up, releasing Outlook.com as the

revamped

new-age email offering to force users away from Gmail. While it

has

its own href="http://pcquest.ciol.com/content/topstories/2012/112080601.asp">set

of

perks, Gmail still offers things which will help to retain

its

loyal subscribers. We look at 5 of those features below:

1) Add Some

Masala To Your Mail
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Loyal
Gmail users will be well aware of
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Labs
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which offers many experimental features that can be added to

your

Gmail interface to improve your user experience. Google has

always

been a supporter of open source development, so it's no

surprise that

a myriad of experimental plug-ins have been submitted by

developers

for your own benefit. Examples of some cool plug-ins are
style="font-style: normal">Flickr

previews in mail
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(which presents photo previews from Flickr inline in Gmail)

and

Canned

Responses
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which are template messages that can be saved and sent

quickly).

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2) Secure Your

Account Better
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Security
experts have been critical of Outlook.com's security because

it only

offers users a maximum 16 character password to pick.

Meanwhile,

Gmail offers as many as 200 characters for its passwords. And

yes, it

is a big deal! It is easier for hackers to figure out a 16

character

password than it is to guess a 200 character password.

Moreover, it

should also be noted that email ids such as
donotreply@outlook.com

were

already

taken up when checked, which may be used by phishers to

launch mail scams in the future. Meanwhile, Gmail has proved

that it

has great filtering systems to detect spam mail, so users are

rarely

troubled by junk mails.

3) Access your

mails any way you want to




Users
want to have the freedom to send/receive mail from other email

aliases into a single consolidated email view. To be able to do

this,

the email service will need to support certain protocols. As

such,

users will be disappointed to know that Outlook.com only offers

POP

support while Gmail offers both POP and IMAP support. Hence,

email

users will be able to receive/send from the Gmail server on a

wider

variety of email clients as compared to Outlook.com.

4) Gmail is

still the Usain Bolt of email services
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Speed
matters for customers. With processing power and internet speeds

growing exponentially every year, email users expect their

services

to load lightning-fast. We did tests on general email loading

times

and search times on both Outlook.com and Gmail, across Chrome,

Firefox and Internet Explorer. Through our use-case

experimentation,

we found that Gmail loads mails faster than Outlook.com and the

search function in Gmail is significantly quicker than

Outlook.com,

probably owing to Google's search engine prowess. While

outlook.com

is by no means slow, Gmail still leads the pack.

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5) Consistency

Is Key




If
you're using the beta version of Outlook.com, you will notice a

jarring change in interface when one switches from the mail view

to

the calendar view. The entire interface changes from the

snazzy-looking Metro style to the old and outdated Hotmail.com

interface. We found this change in interface quite disturbing.

Meanwhile, Gmail maintains a consistent layout between the Mail

view

and other views, such as Google Calendar and Google Drive. While

Microsoft has said that they will also revamp the other views

available through Outlook.com, they have to deliver before they

come

up to par with Gmail.



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