outgun.com

Straight to the point with no silliness today.

I found Outgun the other day by pure chance. You may have heard the story about why I am looking for new email account at the moment because my old one is shutting down in May.

The day I arrived there I was full of joy (yippee) because I thought I’d found my replacement. It was only after a few days that its problems really got noticed, but I’m was still fairly ...
...Before I get on to the down sides though, I’ll give you some of the good points (they outweigh the problems by about 1 million to 1).

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The sign-up process was quite amazing (I nearly fainted and fell on the cat). All you have to do is type in the name you want the account started in (e.g. bjeee), and it’s basically done. You then supply a password and very ... more

Straight to the point with no silliness today.

I found Outgun the other day by pure chance. You may have heard the story about why I am looking for new email account at the moment because my old one is shutting down in May.

The day I arrived there I was full of joy (yippee) because I thought I’d found my replacement. It was only after a few days that its problems really got noticed, but I’m was still fairly confident that I have, despite the problems.

Before I get on to the down sides though, I’ll give you some of the good points (they outweigh the problems by about 1 million to 1).

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The sign-up process was quite amazing (I nearly fainted and fell on the cat). All you have to do is type in the name you want the account started in (e.g. bjeee), and it’s basically done. You then supply a password and very few personal details before the account is open and ready to use.

So why’s it so good??

I’ll do my usual for this bit and split it in to sections. Each section has a roll-down set of subheadings. This really does keep it all very nice and tidy looking. The red and black background is very stylish and very cool.

I’m not quite sure where it all comes from because they actually give very little information about themselves. No amount of user space is mentioned, although it seems to be coping well so far.

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EMAIL

The actual EMAIL section is where most stuff goes on. It is afterall an email site (and nothing else, like yahoo).

Here you find links to your inbox, compose all your stuff etc etc.

~~ COMPOSE – This bit is so good that it is actually like your writing in a ‘word’ document., there are soooo many variables.

Change the colour of the text and/or the background, or change the size and font of the text used on outgoing mail. And when you’re finished, why not run it through a choice of spellcheckers?! If you don’t want to send it yet or you just want to carry on farting around with it tomorrow, just save it in the draft folder. Obviously you’re then very proud of your artwork (message, letter etc), so why not MAKE someone read it by saying its URGENT.

~~ FOLDERS – The easiest thing to set up in the whole wide world!! Just type in a name for the new folder and press enter. All done, and access to it is thereafter, easily gained.

~~ ADDRESS BOOK – The battle for being the easiest is a tough one. No one will ever win and I think that the address book is just as easy as the folders to get going. It’s all pretty normal in content really, its just that Outgun do such a good job of making everything so easy to use!! When you want to fix an address to an outgoing piece of mail, everything is always transferred from book to mail in just a split second. I’ve had troubles with other accounts before, where its really had to take time and think about things (“Oh deary me, why couldn’t have I been born a butterfly?? Boo hoo hoo!!:( before printing anything on your message. No probs here though.

~~ EMAIL OPTIONS - you can set up signatures (which are sooo easily changed with each message you send), play around with your Email organiser and change all sorts of colours (not like another.com where you’d change background colours, but instead make changes to font colours etc. in outgoing and incoming mail (so that you don’t have to fiddle about changing things as you’re writing)). Each person in your address book can be given a different text colour (well, only 5 to chose from actually) if you like.

You can even set up 5 POP accounts (which is more than most I think!!). Automated replies and filters (very very very very easy and brilliant too!! Limited to 12) are both at hand for blocking senders as well as sorting your incoming mail quickly and easily.

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CALENDER

It’s a bit overcomplicated for my needs (I don’t have any), but I use it anyway just to remind myself to go to bed sometimes:)) It really is excellent. Its overcomplicated being is actually a really good thing though, and despite its advanced content, its amazingly easy to use, just like everything else.

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MEETING PEOPLE

I have never before in my life seen a free email account that also had a link straight to their own chatrooms. Well, its not actually *just* theirs. Once inside (which takes just seconds), you will notice lists of names, and it is noticeable that other users are using the chat facility from a few other email services too.

Is this little chat room thing really worth it though???? Actually NO, not really. It seems to be constantly full of silly little monkeys talking about nothing at all.

Outgun also make quite big thing about INVITIG FRIENDS. When you do, I think the idea is that it works a little like MSN Messenger and it will tell you when they’re online so that you can chat to them. So far though, this is one of the problems I’ve faced. Every time I click the ‘invite friends’ button, it just says that my session has ‘timed out’. This seems more of an ISP trait than an email account one.

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I haven’t really pointed out its bad bits yet though, apart from the ‘invite’ thing never working. The overall bad bad one that will probably put a few people off, is that quite often the pages don’t load properly. It will say that it’s done, but half of it will be missing. Waiting does no good, so the refresh button often gets a major seeing too. It comes up with an error warning at least a few times every day, but I’ve found the best way to deal with it is to ignore it. By clicking the thing you want a few times (even when its saying you can’t have it), it normally works after the second or third click. If you can be patient though, then I still rate this as one of the very best free email accounts on the net.

So my advice is to ignore all warnings, and always expect things to go wrong. Despite that though, if you can put up with it, Outgun are running a reliable service that delivers and receives mail at speeds not yet achievable by even the fastest of bunnies running through a field. The whole site is probably the second fastest I’ve ever used, just behind 020.co.uk. So the speed kind of compensates for the number of times you have to refresh pages when they go wrong.

So, as a little summary, what’s it got that, from what I’ve seen is pretty much unique to Outgun???

I’ve never had an email account that was also a chat room before.

It has errors that fix themselves??

It doesn’t load properly sometimes (pretty unique I think – it just adds charm!!)

It will tell you the time of your last successful log-in and where you where when you did it. This means that the time obviously has to be set in to it, but even though it’s an American site, you can change time zone to suit you wherever you are. It will even show you your TOTAL log-in history. Seems totally unnecessary, but I can actually view the times and locations that I’ve logged in at, ever since I started the account on the 8th of this month

Lastly, when composing messages, it seems more like you’re using a ‘paid for’ account, or one like Outlook Express. If you could actually us it off-line, I’d even go as far as saying that Outgun was better, and its free!! :)

 

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