to still use email?

[LoveliestFriendEver]

I just don't get it. How is WhatsApp or messenger more convenient that email/text? Am I being a luddite?

I've never got on board with Facebook or the newer ways of managing electronic communication.

I email photos to family and use text messages. If I need an instant response I call.

the fact is that new methods of communication will only take over from older ones if they are better

Yes that thought has been kicking around. I might try WA.

Email for business. WhatsApp for personal.

Try WA OP. It's very versatile in terms of how visible and available you want to be

I’m clearly another Luddite, never used WA, no one’s ever asked me to join their WA group (or whatever the etiquette is). Most of my contacts/friends use email, or the occasional text. I am not interested in looking at anyone’s photos, rarely take them myself. If I want to talk to someone I like to use the old fashioned landline.
My DH has to belong to a WA group for work and he is bored senseless by the trivia that is posted on it, but has to check it regularly in case there is anything important.

Still use email, a private account for friends and family and one for work. As much privacy as we can have nowadays.
Ahh, I miss the old days of ringing my school mates (while perched on the stairs) on the landline phone. Asking shyly when anyone answered, is my friend there?
And having "the look" from mum for spending over 10mins on the phone. Won't someone think of the phone bill.

I'm old school. I still ring people on the mobile even though I hate it going to voicemail and blurting out "just me, ring back when you have a minute"

Hate texts, because you don't know who has read them.

My mum uses WhatsApp now, so maybe it's me who is out of the loop, and I'm ok with that

WhatsApp is like a conversation. Email is the equivalent to letter-writing these days. Yes, it is similar to text but with a few differences:

• Free to send photos/GIFs
• Free video calling
• If I see someone is online it is easy to start a conversation than if you're sending an email and waiting for a reply
• You can swipe right to highlight the message that you're replying to which makes it easier to keep track of a chatty conversation. Yes, you can cut and paste comments within an email, but it's much easier to do this with an individual WhatsApp message.

WhatsApp works best IMHO if you send a new message for each new comment. So I might say:
"Hey, how are you?"
"Did you have a good Christmas?"
"Are we still on for Thursday?"
"Did you hear about Lucy's dad?"

Then the person I'm chatting to can reply to each message individually by highlighting it.

And you can use it with both iPhone and Android - loads of people I know are moving away from iPhones now.

I think the vast majority of people have reasonable data allowances with their phones these days. I travel a lot for work and rarely bother to connect to public WiFi these days.

Oh, and if you're finding message notifications intrusive then it is really easy to mute a conversation for as long as you need.

using a plusnet monthly bundle you could have unlimited calls, unlimited texts and 1.5giga of data for your £6. Hmm. I'm paying £10 about every three months, so £3 a month. I know the difference is trivial, what worries me with a contract is if my phone is stolen, what stops someone running up a huge bill that I'm liable for? I'm reaching an age where getting my phone stolen or simply leaving it on a table somewhere is something I need to consider.

1. security on your phone, fingerprints and passwords.

2. you call your provider and report it stolen and have your number blocked.

And tbh if £10 is lasting you 3 months you probably don’t communicate with people on the scale that most do these days.

You mean email and text are on the way out? WTF?!!

what stops someone running up a huge bill that I'm liable for?

1. It's a good idea to have a lock/pin on your phone regardless of whether you're on a contract or not.
2. You can cap your overspend on a contract - I can only go £10 out of plan for this reason. Not that I ever have, it just gives me leeway if I need it.
3. I can remotely erase my phone from my laptop or another phone if I lose it.

if my phone is stolen, what stops someone running up a huge bill that I'm liable for?

If you run out of data, you have to phone up and add more on. you can't go over without knowing about it.

They could phone overseas I guess, but there's a cap on how far over contract you can go, presumably you'd phone up and report your phone stolen as soon as you noticed anyway, and frankly most phone thieves take the sim out straight away because they are after the handset, not your account.

We live overseas and WhatsApp is great for calling family for free, sending them texts and photos (DS is the first grandchild in the family), and for work group chats.

I think of WhatsApp as a cross between texting and twitter. DH is in front of a computer all day so he uses Slack for work chats, but as a doctor I am on my feet most of the day, so my phone is much more convenient. And yes there is some trivia, but messages like "xray meeting cancelled", "has anyone seen the ultrasound machine?" and "who's teaching the SHOs today? Nobody's turned up" are actually pretty useful to receive straight away. Not much use getting them six hours later when I get back to my desk, and texting fifteen consultants individually would be bloody expensive, and take forever.

I can also send status updates that don't need a response ("Dr X is absent today, I'll be covering clinic") and know that everyone's seen it - our work email inboxes get completely clogged up with rubbish (hospital on black alert, IT downtime, pathology mailshots, various all-staff spam from HR/PR depts etc.) that we often miss important things.

you call your provider and report it stolen and have your number blocked but if I've had my phone stolen and it's several hours before I get home? or several days before I decide it's not hidden in the house somewhere?

Yeah, I've got a pin on my phone. But I assume someone who knows what they're doing can get round that.

Thanks badidea - I didn't know you could cap overspend, that's something to look into.

And tbh if £10 is lasting you 3 months you probably don’t communicate with people on the scale that most do these days. Very true! Even taking into account that the people I communicate with most frequently are on the same supplier so I get free calls to them. And I do quite a lot by email from my home PC which feels free, even if it isn't.

I'm a living example of what happens if you get comfortable with a technology and don't keep up with emerging stuff which doesn't seem to offer you and advantages. I've been using computers since about 1970 and I've been using the internet for over 20 years, so it's not that I'm inherently tech adverse.

most phone thieves take the sim out straight away because they are after the handset, not your account. That's reassuring! Part of my anti-theft precautions are to have a handset that no-one would want to steal.

I don’t use email to communicate with friends, partly because of the amount of junk mail I get that any message sent to me is liable to get lost amongst all the spam! Yes I have a high junk mail filter, and try to unsubscribe as much as possible, but even so I still seem to get a lot of emails. I generally go through it once a day and delete most of it except important stuff (eg school messages).
So if someone sends me an email, I assume it’s not urgent.
If they send me a WhatsApp, I assume it’s social.
If they send me a text, I assume it’s more important (eg i going to be late for our lunch today)

Email is slow and awkward and few people use it anymore.

WhatsApp and messenger are easier and instant.

I haven’t emailed anyone (non professionally) as a means of communication in years.

*BitOutOfPractice

Email for business. WhatsApp for personal*

^^^
This.

Lots of providers offer a cap now, and to me, the convenience of data out and about (listening to the radio, podcasts, browsing the web, my library's online magazine app, WhatsApp, messenger, Google maps) is worth the risk I might lose a tenner. I've ended up giving in and buying a mid priced phone as well, because ultimately I now do maybe 90% of my personal computing on my phone, with the laptop only coming out for excel or major research projects.

Email is slow and awkward and few people use it anymore.

I think you'll find millions of people use it.
Just not for 'chatting with friends'.
It is extremely useful for all sorts of things though - I have about 4 hours worth of stuff I need to do by e-mail at the moment that I am procastinating over.

I don't think email is any slower than messages. I get them on my phone as quickly as I get my whatsapp ones. I just prefer a bigger screen to read them, and I hate opening documents on my phone - that is slow, and the screen is way too small for that.

I do like using different things for different reasons.

Email is slow and awkward and few people use it anymore.

Well, for everyone I know, work, friends and family, email is the default communication method. So, not "few" at all in my world.

I have a love/ hate relationship with WhatsApp.
I find it great for communicating with family and friends.
We share photos easily and can call also.

My dps work have a group WhatsApp and also individual colleagues. His phone continually goes off with calls or texts even on his days off/hoildays. It is constant. It's like he is on call 24/7 and every night a 2am delivery report. (Its not a super important job, I think they contact just because they can )

Different apps for different functions. Not difficult to wrap your head round.

Email is slow and awkward and few people use it anymore.

IME most businesses still use email an awful lot.

I do - school; DH does - solicitor

Pretty much every friend I know uses email for work purposes. A wide range of businesses and professions included.