Just curious

Depends...at work I use Outlook. At home, AOL. I've also got accounts on Yahoo, Hotmail & Gmail. Use the web interface for them.

Thunderbird for Yahoo, web for Gmail.

Thunderbird user here.

Outlook at work, both the client and web based versions.
Hotmail, web based, for personal use.

Web for all my emails...

First class for school, AOL for home, G mail and hotmail for the web.

Is there any advantages to using client software?

just the ability to d/l the message and keep it offline on your local computer. But I'm not so tied to email that I can't wait until I get online for something. (Of course, I'm rarely more than a few minutes from an internet connection....that might have something to do with it.)

I use the Bat and I love it. I was a Outlook user but the constant security holes and the fact that most e-mail-viruses target outlook made me switch. The Bat offers all the features I need, while still being realatively slim. The only drawback is that it isn't free.

@archer: as turner said, if you use client software you can store your messages locally, so you can access them even if your internet link is down. furthermore, most e-mail-clients offer additional features to maintain your mailbox and encryption. what's more: if you, like me, have multiple accounts you can access them all at once without having to log on the every single one.

ThunderBird.

and gmail.com

In no particular order:
Yahoo! - 3 - Web
SBC Yahoo! - 2 - Outlook
MSN - 1 - Web
Hotmail - 4 - Web
University Account - 1 - Web
AventureMail - 2 - Web
Youvegotpost - 2 - Web
2 Domain Names for Websites include accounts - Web

EDIT: forgot to list the clients.

Web, mostly. I tried Opera's M2 and couldn't get used to the different look and feel of a mail client vs. web mail (I've used web mail for a steady 3 years). I do occasionally use Mailwasher to knock out spam that I get.

Outlook and Thunderbird - depending on what account I want to receive email from.

I generally try to keep the email account that gets the most spam in the most secure program...so Outlook gets the least spam ridden account ;)

In addition, I have an online service with the university - specific adress not written here for security reasons :scan:

Is there any advantages to using client software?

In addition to what others have stated, you can also store as many emails as you want using client software as you are not limited to a specific mailbox size. Note though that you're still limited to the maximum attachment size specified by your ISP or mail service. The client programs also will typically integrate into most of your applications that may call email programs/functions such as Excel and Word, so you can directly send out emails and/or attachments from these applications.

E-mail at work: Outlook, when I want to check my work email from somewhere else I use www.myemail.com
For private e-mail I use Hotmail. I love it that they are going to upgrade the inbox. ;)

I knew it, I should have made this a multiple-choice poll :( I wanted to at first (hence the (s) in the title) but then forgot about it.

to the thunderbird users. what are your experiences? is it stable? I once tried it but I had trouble downloading all the emails after I hadn't logged in for a while...