More and more everyday the computer is becoming a mere gateway to the Internet. Right now I'd say my Internet browser is where I get 90% of what I need out of my computer, and I believe that one day, not very far from today, it will be around 99%. The importance of the Internet is already a game changer in the computer industry, because nowadays computers don't need to be that powerful if all you need is access to the Internet. This trend is especially evident when it comes to the small form factor laptops - netbooks like the ASUS Eee PC or the HP Mini are perfect examples of this new way of looking at computers.

However, there are things that still turn the users' focus away from the browser now and again. Two of the most important ones are IM (check my hubpage about the awesome web IM platform meebo) and the email client - Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.. Nowadays everybody has a personal email account on Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL or other and will probably also have a work email, an email for the shady "why do you need my email for?" sites, and on and on. Managing all these email accounts can become a really daunting and time-consuming task. This is the reason email clients are so important and useful, more today than they ever were, because they allow you to download emails from several accounts into one central location.

But using email clients can bring up other problems:

- first and foremost it eats disk space like crazy, especially if you receive lots of attachments with family photos, Susan Boyle videos and slideshows with all those cute puppies

- you need to keep it always open in order for it to fetch the emails, and because of all the info it needs to keep accessible it may slow down your computer and become a memory hog

- you can only use your email client effectively on one computer, unless you use synchronization protocols like IMAP - or always keep a copy on the servers when using pop3 - while you're going back and forth between home and work. But even with IMAP, the problem will arise again if you use a computer other than those two for some reason.

When I decided to get rid of my email client, I found out that Gmail can fetch email from other accounts, so I targeted all my accounts to my main one. The problems became evident only when sending emails. Gmail (like Zenbe and most other email providers that boast the ability to fetch emails from other accounts) doesn't send them through said accounts. Instead, all emails you send will be sent from your main account as an alias, causing Outlook and Hotmail, among others, to show a security warning claiming that the email was sent by x on behalf of y, which reads something like "this email may not be from the person it claims to be". This can cause quite an embarrassment if you send an email thinking it is going "myname@professionalemail.com" and it arrives "sexyboy69@personalemail.com". Quite amusing indeed. :-)

Besides, I'm not a fan of Gmail threading (I know a lot of people are, but I think it should be optional), and the fact that it only has labels and not folders will make it extremely hard to manage five email accounts in the same inbox. For example, I would like to have a folder for each of my email addresses, so I could then sort the incoming email in each of them using labels such as "to do", "important", "project xyz" or whatever. To do that on Gmail, I would have to have literally tens of labels, all at the same level.

I found a couple of other so-called online email clients, but all of them had considerable limitations. I was about to give up on my hunt when I stumbled upon Zoho. And it is a life saver! Zoho is perfect! Signing up with Zoho you will receive an account @zoho.com but you don't need to use it, you can start adding all your accounts' pop3 and smtp settings and it will immediately retrieve your emails and save copies of them. You will be able to send and receive mails from all of your email addresses without ever needing to log in and out, because switching between accounts is as simple as a click on a dropdown menu. Which means it's a real email client, with all the features you need - except it's online.

With Zoho, you'll have a separate inbox, outbox, draft, sent, spam and trash folders for each account. You'll have the ability to create subfolders and add labels, and you really should check out how beautifully they handle the threading issue: every email is a separate email, but clicking a small icon will show you a tree with all the emails in that thread, sorted out in levels for immediate visual understanding.

Zoho is able to handle over 10 accounts and gives you loads of storage space - I don't even think there is a limit, but I do have more than 10 accounts and I never delete anything. Filters, signatures (including images, unlike Gmail), archives, keyboard shortcuts, a shared contact list, vacation reply, email receipt warnings, import/export features, you name it - everything a good email client has, Zoho has it too. Plus a slick and highly customisable layout (and a great mobile version as well!) and a lot of other small features that will delight you as you discover them. And all of this for free!

Besides, having an online client means you can access it from any computer at any time. But if you need access to your emails and the ability to compose replies while you're offline, Zoho Mail has perfect integration with Google Gears and will give you the same usability as Outlook or Thunderbird.

With Zoho you get the best of both worlds - the feature-richness of a desktop email client and the ease of use and remote accessibility a webmail provides. You will never need anything else, so say goodbye to Outlook and Gmail. And your Zoho account will give you access to all sorts of other tools as well, such as Zoho Calendar, Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, etc. It's the biggest and best collection of free web apps I've ever found, and I advise you to go check it out right now!