Like mouser, tamasd, kartal, wraith808, mrainey and maybe others, all my mail is downloaded locally. I like having control of my files, and I don't find gmail's search tools more sophisticated than X1 or any other desktop search software for that matter. BTW, it's not because one downloads all emails locally that he/she necessarily spends hours sorting and classifying them.
-Armando
Me too. I have to have control of my files locally. And I back everything up myself onto my own drives, my own way. Just in general, I'm not a fan of the whole using web applications that is going to be the next big thing. I know it's a fantastic evolution for 90% of the people out there who don't like to fiddle with software and don't have their computers meticulously set up to do every little thing just the way they want. But for us powerusers, we need that control. We want our stuff in our own house in our own hard drives.
And you know what else, web apps are great, but they just don't react the same way as a locally installed program. It's hard to describe, I want to say the response time is slower, but a lot of them (like google) is pretty quick and fast. There's just a "feel" to them that doesn't sit well with me. There's a viscosity to them if that makes any sense.
For similar reasons, I'm not a huge fan of touch-screen technology. It's really cool and useful for most people. But it's not so great when you need to get down and dirty with what you're doing. That iphone touch screen keyboard is just not as effective as a tactile keyboard...it's not possible. That's how I feel about web apps vs local programs.
What's going to happen to our computers, then? Our storage devices, our cpu, our memory? What's the defining piece of equipment going to be? The Ethernet port? The speed of your ISP connection? I would completely rather have my own equipment limiting my processing capabilities rather than relying on the ISP connection. Talk about reliability...unless there's a big revolution and everyone is able to get fiber optic, unlimited bandwidth connections (which will never happen in the near future). It's waaaaay better to rely on your own equipment for all that stuff.
Archivarius[/url] indexes IMAP accounts (i.e. it makes it own local, indexed text copy of the account). I'm sure it's not the only desktop search software to offer this feature.
-johnk
Seriously. There is nothing any web app can do that some program can't do better. The only advantage for web apps, like mouser said, and it's a pretty HUGE advantage, is the fact that you can access web stuff anywhere.
No, I am personally dreading the day that web apps take over. But I'm not too worried, I'm certain that the local programs won't become obsolete, at least not in my lifetime.
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