[jyl]

I prefer email for many communications. It is easier to ask a very specific question and require a concrete and detailed response. It is harder to evade, gloss over, hedge, and ramble, or at least it is harder to do so without getting called on it. Email is searchable and archivable, as already noted, so right and wrong answers can more easily be identified later. I can read email while doing other things, or on the subway, or on the weekends. Often I can read and comprehend an email more quickly than I can have the same thing explained to me by phone. Most important, you don't waste all that time chasing after the guy who doesn't pick up his phone and then leaves you an evasive vmail at an hour when he knows you're not around to pick up.

The main problem with email, for me, is that it is so easy to cc tons of it to everyone who doesn't care. I get 50MB a day, and after a while I start deleting everything from people who have a history of sending me useless stuff. As for spam, that seems to be less of a problem for me now. We have some good spam filters.