But the really important question: is it the best messaging application?

For all the hoopla about the cloud, there haven't been a lot of comparisons between cloud apps like Gmail, Mint, and Pandora and their desktop equivalents like Thunderbird, Quicken, or iTunes -- except, of course, for the inevitable "cloud roolz, desktop sux" articles that dismissively sweep aside locally installed apps in favor for the cloud for the simplistic reason that they're cool and new.

But are cloud apps really better all of the time, just because they're cloud? Let's take a look at some popular cloud-based apps and their desktop counterparts, with the focus being to determine which app -- cloud or desktop -- is the better offering in its class.

Let's just get this one out of the way right now. On the cloud, there's Gmail. With tight integration with calendaring, contacts, and other Google tools like Google Docs, this is a very hard app to beat. If you look at the entirety of the Google package, really, then it is impossible to beat. But, when looking at just the messaging features, the answer is not so clear cut. Microsoft Outlook, for example, offers the best connectivity with Exchange servers and the growing install base of SharePoint servers out there. Despite the popularity of Gmail, there are still a lot of businesses that are leery about hosting their corporate data on outside servers. Messaging on local systems is much more attractive. Alternative servers like Open-Xchange and Alfresco can provide the same functionality as Exchange and SharePoint, so cost becomes even less of a factor. Mozilla's Thunderbird is another very robust desktop client -- and, unlike Outlook, it can be used on Windows, OS X, and Linux. Thunderbird offers much of the same messaging functionality as Outlook and even Gmail, but for anything beyond that, there's a caveat: some tools must be added to a Thunderbird installation. For calendaring, for instance, users need to use either Lightning or Sunbird. The cost of Thunderbird -- free -- makes it very attractive, so it's a good option for home or small business users that access their messages from just a few set locations. Enterprise users are probably going to be more comfortable with an in-house messaging solution, which means some form of non-cloud client/server arrangement. Home users, however, will be very well served by Gmail, especially if they expect any kind of mobility when accessing messages.