If you are like us, your life completely revolves around that little inbox not to mention its crucial contributions to commerce. Earlier, when webmail was just sprouting up, Microsoft Outlook reigned and stood really tall. For both businesses and individuals today, Microsoft Outlook might very well be like the dwindling count of the tigers in the world, leading to a possible extinction.
We literally hate anything to do with the hard disks on our computers; we don\’t even trust our servers. No matter how you look at it, we find that hardware is as fragile and unpredictable as they come. We cannot, not even if you point a double-barrelled shotgun on us, vouch for storing anything as precious as email (yes, it’s precious for us. We know some of you might hate it) on hard disk drives or even any of those removable drives like USB external Hard drives and flash drives. That’s not to say that we are all digital and literally store everything online; we believe in a balance. We are believers in hybrid solutions.
Email is literally the forerunner of our business. Without it, we bite the dust in just as long as it takes a rocket to escape earth’s gravitational pull. Files and folders apart, our email needs to find a place to stay.
The webmail we use now is Gmail (and it can be used with companies too by setting it up that way). Our business emails actually come to the webmail related to our domains and hosting accounts like myname@datum.com . This is in turn routed back to our corporate Gmail account (which never runs out of storage space; in fact, it adds up all the time). However, there is a copy of email on our original webmail inbox too. We now have two copies, don’t we?
You might now ask us: Aren’t you leaving everything in Google’s hands? Is that your idea of being “safe and secure”?
Absolutely not!
That’s when we use automated back-up solutions like Carbonite and Mozy and have our hard disk (or particular important sections/folders/files backed-up continuously and automatically. If that isn\’t enough and if we really need more copies, we could use yet another online solution just to store the files/folders/programs. Additionally, we might even use an external USB hard drive if need be. Here’s a timely round-up of 5 Best Online Back-up Solutions at lifehacker, you could find helpful.
If you use Outlook or Thunderbird, can’t we still do the same thing as above? We can. But then, what about the possibility of not being near your computer or laptop? What if you suddenly have to work out of Chile, Bangkok or India and out of a friend’s laptop or a cyber cafe? What if you don’t find Outlook or Thunderbird in the all those other computers you are forced to access? Are you going to install and configure these desktop based email systems?
We just find that working completely online gives me a freedom from hardware, which other tethers you to a machine or a desk.
Snap out of it and go online; it’s the best thing to do.
