When it comes to technology, most people fall into one of two camps: Either they hate it and shy away from change and advancement, or they love it, and they are always first in line for the upgrade or latest and greatest. Personally, I try to walk the middle road and find a balance somewhere between the two.
Both of the philosophies mentioned above can be dangerous. Resisting change and failure to embrace new technology is closed minded. It is important to be open to new ideas and ways of doing things – generally these advancements improve the quality of our lives and ease with which we accomplish things. If not for changes in technology we would still be sending letters by way of the pony express rather than email and sitting on the phone for hours to purchase airline tickets rather than doing it online in minutes. Think about how you would have gotten money and directions to a restaurant 15 years ago. I hope you got the money before the bank closed…
Racing towards technology and embracing change too quickly can have its downfalls too. Unless you are a self-proclaimed early adopter and enjoying helping companies work out the kinks, sometimes it’s better to not be in the first round of people to try a new product. Bugs and pieces not all working together properly can lead to time consuming trouble shooting and frustration.
Recently, a lot of people have been moving off local email clients like Outlook to web-based email like Hotmail and Gmail. I tried this briefly myself, but found that I personally didn’t like some things about gmail. I don’t like the way they index emails together. I also think that it does not look professional when you send a work related email and it comes from kylemaikath@gmail on behalf of Kyle Maikath. I’ve also experienced issues when accepting invites via Gmail – they don’t always show up on your calendar and that can be a real problem.
As a result, I’ve opted to stay with Outlook. It works well for me and I am happy with its performance – less 1 item. I really don’t like the archiving in Outlook. .PST files can be gigantic and clunky and it’s tough to retrieve information from them. I had problems about a year ago in which a giant .PST file crashed my computer and I lost everything. Not fun…
I started to think that there has to be a happy medium between the two. I started looking at Gmail again and noticed that there was unlimited storage. And then the light went off. I decided to continue to use Outlook for my day to day operations, but to use Gmail as my means for backing up. This revelation led me to my current configuration: Emails are received and managed using Outlook. Emails are automatically deleted from Outlook once they are 3 months old. Emails are automatically forwarded to Gmail where they are stored indefinitely.
The configuration has worked out great. I am still using the interface and app. I prefer for email, but I am also taking advantage of the unlimited storage of an online email client. In the end, a combination of new and older technology worked best for me and allowed me to do everything I wanted. Best of both worlds!
