Hello. I have multiple email addresses, some of them are from my own domain (for interacting with customers etc). I'm also responsible for an email address for my work place.

What do you use to read and write emails? Do you check for emails every now and then or do you keep a client open for instant notification? Do you use an email client or a web service (which client/service)? Do you care about google reading your emails (even business ones) when you use gmail? What's your favorite device for your email needs?

Do you check for emails every now and then or do you keep a client open for instant notification?

At work, I go to the office and check for emails when I get in, and then I usually check again at the end of the night. For personal emails, my phone or tablet alerts me to new mail.

Do you use an email client or a web service?

At work we use Outlook, for personal use I have the gmail app on my android devices and sometimes I'll login to gmail on my computer's browser.

Do you care about google reading your emails (even business ones) when you use gmail?

No, all that would happen is that someone at Google would get bored to death.

What's your favorite device for your email needs?

I don't have a favourite, but I read mail on my phone most, as it's always on me, and I send most emails through my PC as I hate trying to type on a 5" screen.

What do you use to read and write emails?

Outlook at work. iPhone everywhere else

Do you check for emails every now and then or do you keep a client open for instant notification?

I spend about a half hour in the morning and then for the rest of the day i get notifications whenever there is a new mail or calendar appointment.
Some people at work get so many emails that some days all they do from when they get in to when they go home is respond to the previous days email.

Do you use an email client or a web service?

Email client.

Do you care about google reading your emails (even business ones) when you use gmail?

For personal email no. If google read my company mail I would go to prison.

What's your favorite device for your email needs?

iPhone

I mostly use Thunderbird on my desktop or Windows tablet. I'll use the default mail client on my phone when I have no other choice.

Thunderbird is usually open when my computer is on.

I don't care about Google reading my emails, though I have my own mail server that I hope Google doesn't have access to :)

Favorite device ... my desktop computer.

I don't know if this is standard for email, but it at least works for Gmail. You can add arbitrary text to the username portion of your email after a plus sign. So "my.name+blahblahblah@gmail.com" will go to "my.name@gmail.com". I come up with a different prefix for every site I register on, and then I get to keep track of how people contact me without having to create multiple accounts.

Also, gmail ignores periods in the username portion, which has given me many an opportunity to troll a few folks who were trying to reach someone else with my name. I once participated in a history class group discussion for my doppelganger. Apparently, I was more helpful than he usually is, though, which is pretty bad considering I knew nothing about what everyone was talking about without Wikipedia.

I usually email with my computer.

I ahve two accounts, one for forums/other social sites and one that's private for friends and suchlike. Helps keep everything separated and nothing gets too terribly cluttered!

I try to avoid email when I can, as I find it to be a rather antiquated medium.

Fastmail hosts my email (with an address at my personal domain), and I use the default Mail applications on OS X / iOS to access it. I don't have push notification enabled.

I leave everything in my inbox until I have read and processed it (which means making a calendar event, to-do list item, writing down some piece of information like a package tracking number, or clicking the link to the article about Lego that my mother sent me). Then I delete it. I don't save any actual emails, ever.

I follow the same basic process for work email, although I use the default client (usually Outlook, although my current job uses Gmail) and archive everything instead of deleting it.

I use Thunderbird on my desktop. It's always open, I have it set up with 3 separate accounts using IMAP (one with the company that employs me to hack on Free software, one for hacking on Free Software on my own time, and a gmail account for runny crap that requires a gmail account). I aggregate a whole lot of individual email addresses through my own domain and have any number of filters set up to automatically file mailing lists and other low-priority messages.

Thunderbird sucks in many ways but it has many advantages over the alternatives (like, for example, it comes with the OS).

I have tried using a web client and found it prevents any kind of productive use of my time. I have a fourth account I only access through a web client, but I share it with my wife and she never deletes any mail so there are literally tens of thousands of messages I do not want to synch locally. Productivity is moot in that case.

I do not use teeny tiny devices like tablets or phones to read and reply to email. They do not display enough on the screen for reading and are impossible to use for effective replies, and do not allow easy interactive with other applications while writing a message. I also do not want to communicate when I am not at work or otherwise engaged online. My time is mine and mine alone, not my employers and not some whiny random turd on the internet who feels they are entitle to something for free. Email is not an immediate-mode communications medium.

I just use gmail to send and receive messages. Do I care if google reads my messages? A little bit, but not too much. I doubt a google engineer is sifting through my account reading my messages and getting jollies out of it. What I don't want is some sort of algorithm or third party to run against every email message I've sent in order to build a hidden profile on me and my habits and use that to target me in some way.

In my experience, email is a double edged sword. It's a great way to communicate, but it's also a source for bad productivity if you're not careful. If you're using a client like Outlook to manage your email, you'll get a notification each time an email comes in. The notification is a distraction and the temptation is to stop whatever you're doing and see what the message is. If you get an email every 15 minutes, you'll never get any work done. I usually check my messages about twice a day and call it good (though I rarely get any, so who cares?).

It also takes a long time to write up a reply for an email. Writing is slow. Time is money. When you're responding to an email, its worth taking a moment to think about it: If you're responding to just one person in the office, it might be faster and more efficient to just respond verbally instead of playing email pong. If you need to broadcast a message to many people, it's probably faster and more efficient to email.

Personally, I hate communicating with people via technology. It's a poor proxy for genuine human interaction, which I don't think we get enough of these days. face to face > phone call > email > Instant message

The thing that is good about email is that it leaves a record of your conversation. I manage a busy restaurant so am constantly communicating with people about custom menus for group bookings, and I have a terrible memory so it's great knowing I can just read through the emails when I need the details. i usually do try to call people as well, but due to the hours I work, when I first get there and am doing office stuff, most of the people I want to talk to are also working and not answering their phones. By the time they're not working, I'm usually too busy to talk to them, and then when it's quiet again, it's too late at night to call people.