We all either have a gmail account OR know someone who does.  The forever in beta webmail from Google.  After one of my cow-orkers decided that they would be going ‘mobile’ for a bit and how to manage their email on their Blackberry/iPhone/Palm/Windows Mobile or whatever they get I decided to tell them to use Gmail.  Unfortunately they have about 3 billion messages and are a bit dated when it comes to using anything besides Outlook. Read More Below...

So I took a risk and setup Gmail to check my accounts and began to work in parallel with my normal email client (Thunderbird).  I kept a promise to go to Gmail FIRST when checking my email.   I’d send from Gmail and what do yo think happened to this POP3 junky?

I got hooked!  Granted I didn’t test mobile or dial-up functionality and I’ve been only using it for about 2 weeks now.  It seems to be  smoother.  Now for a few observations.

• Importing
  • Importing contacts is a bit of a problem.  Gmail need a Name and Email address to import. Thunderbird isn’t so nice Granted my Thunderbird Address book leaves a bit to be desired.   Outlook users may have a bit of an easier time though.
  • Messages – With the recent addition of IMAP to Gmail  I was able to drag/drop messages.
  • Folder – Don’t exist, but don’t dispair!  Use Labels they appear and work just like IMAP folders.
• Receiving  Email
  • Email can be received HOWEVER  when checking POP accounts it  can be  a bit slow.  You’ll get the messages just not sure when they will appear.  The little delay gives me a chance to breathe.
  • Conversations – Email is placed in conversations.  Which is a threaded view that lets you see  both sides of the message.  This does reduce the amount of entries in your inbox.     Once you get used to working with them.  They become invisible and even ‘required’ when working with your email.
  • Filters/Labels – While in Thunderbird i had a TON of email filters and folders but with Gmail they really don’t like you to do that.  But with the Inbox/Archive ability I rarely every have more than 20 conversations in my inbox.  I do filter some of my server admin messages and the like out of the Inbox right away.
• Composing
• No real template ability.  There isn’t really the ability as far as I can tell to have templates for email messages which is VERY helpful for IT people when they have to again tell someone how to setup their email account.
• Additional Window – Often I’ll open a couple messages so I can refer and copy to my current message.

Overall the experience has been GREAT.  I’m very happy and may even switch my MX records to use the  Gmail servers.

There does remain the question of ‘privacy’  and what happens if Google goes under.  It’s highly unlikely for the latter but for the former.  For the privacy issue.  If someone wants bad enough to find that info they’ll find a way, Google or not…