Gmail vs Outlook.com

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
What are your favorite features of Gmail and Outlook.com?

What do you dislike about them?

My favorite things about Gmail include the speed and stability.

The Outlook interface has improved and is much better, but the menu are still slow to respond on my older computer.

I have noticed that more of my old Hotmail spam goes to the Outlook junk folder instead of that inbox.

I don't notice the Gmail advertising too much. Outlook doesn't have any on my pages.

I have to mention both are better than Yahoo as far as advertising goes, Yahoo has a couple ad placements that really slow down the page load times.

A follower recently commented:

I prefer #Outlook.com's threading, more obvious attachments, and easy-to-set-up per-user "sweep/clean-up" rules over #Gmail.
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
A follower recently commented:

I prefer #Outlook.com's threading, more obvious attachments, and easy-to-set-up per-user "sweep/clean-up" rules over #Gmail.

They added:

Also, I like that People in #Outlook.com is equal to Calendar, Mail, SkyDrive—not automated & buried like #Gmail Contacts.
 

foggy

Valued Member
I closed my Outlook account a while ago, so I can't verify this right now, but, as I recall, when they first came out with 2FA it didn't seem (to me) quite as secure as Gmail's. I think it had to do with Outlook allowing a user to bypass the 2FA by using the security question challenge. IOW, if someone (the account owner himself/herself) didn't have use of the mobile phone anymore to receive codes and wanted/needed to disable 2FA, getting access to the account in those circumstances was just a matter of using the same security question & answer procedure that many hackers have likely been using on Hotmail accounts all along! Again, I can't remember the particulars at this point, but I know this made an immediate impression on me that Outlook's version of 2FA wasn't the same as what I had experienced in Gmail's in this regard.

With Gmail, I don't remember precisely what happens in such a case (and I really don't want to go through the rigamarole of disabling/reenabling 2FA just now), but I think that when someone loses a phone and the alternate code list, one must go through the entire account recovery process (not just the security question bit).
 

foggy

Valued Member
One thing I do like about Gmail (and Fastmail, for that matter) in contrast to Outlook.com (from what I remember) is that the 'conversation threading' is "oldest on top." If I were simply looking at a message list, then "newest on top" would be fine for my purposes. But if I'm going to enable threading - for the purpose of being able to browse through a sequence of related emails - then I'd like to do so the same way I read through everything else in English: from top to bottom. GM and FM collapse longer threads (with a clickable ellipsis to expand interior messages), so that viewing isn't unwieldy and you don't have to scroll to the bottom of a long thread to find the most recent message. I guess I just never "got" the whole idea behind the "newest on top" approach to email conversations. :rolleyes:



In any case, I'm a little like Theresa in this regard, in that I do have a Google account (mainly for You Tube and the now defunct Google Reader), but rarely use GM for anything more than testing email stuff and seeing occasionally what new features they have. For the most part, I myself find more peace of mind in paying $0.03-$0.04/day ($12-$16/yr) for a service that includes personal CS when necessary.
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
With Gmail, I don't remember precisely what happens in such a case (and I really don't want to go through the rigamarole of disabling/reenabling 2FA just now), but I think that when someone loses a phone and the alternate code list, one must go through the entire account recovery process (not just the security question bit).

For Gmail, users have the option to store a printed list of 1 time use access codes.

They're a nice include in the "in case I die... " envelope that should be stored in a safe place.
 
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