Whats the big deal with gmail ????

[AJ Muni]

Ive noticed alot or people raving about having a gmail email account. whats the big deal ?? am i missing out on something?? i had the same thoughts about ADIUM, and downloaded it last night, and WOW is it a great program (i was missing out)... so whats the hype of having a gmail account??? i do know about the 2gb of free space...

 

[wako]

Ive noticed alot or people raving about having a gmail email account. whats the big deal ?? am i missing out on something?? i had the same thoughts about ADIUM, and downloaded it last night, and WOW is it a great program (i was missing out)... so whats the hype of having a gmail account??? i do know about the 2gb of free space...

pop email supported
no big banner ads just very small text boxes at the right side
extremely easy interface
alot of options you can do
UNLIMITED amount of email space.
THE BEST SPAM BLOCKER EVER

I just wanted to point out the misconception. If you goto the website gmail.com, you can see a little counter always counting up. Theoretically you have unlimited space for email.

 

[Verto]

Ive noticed alot or people raving about having a gmail email account. whats the big deal ?? am i missing out on something?? i had the same thoughts about ADIUM, and downloaded it last night, and WOW is it a great program (i was missing out)... so whats the hype of having a gmail account??? i do know about the 2gb of free space...

You get geek street cred for using and loving all things Google.

 

[Project]

Its simply the best web based email service out there to me... lightning fast, groundbreaking features, AJAX, conversation views, labels, constantly increasing space (2620mb and counting), no banner ads etc. People will talk about the contextual ads, but I NEVER notice them. Its funny though, because they are usually relevant and I sometimes click them lol....

Look out for the next Yahoo Mail though. Oddpost was a superb email service, and Yahoo have added to it since they bought out the company.

 

[Project]

Good point about the spam filter. I have not received one single spam email into my inbox in over a years use of the program. Thats amazing. It all gets filtered to the spam folder, which I often double check just to make sure it didnt mistakenly put in legit email in there. But it never does.

Another feature is the search. Its great.

And its extremely customisable with Greasemonkey.

However, I have some annoyances about Gmail....

- no IMAP support
- no ability to sort messages by a particular field (ie sender, message size etc)
- ability to manage more than 1 gmail account from a single account..
- calendar with support for ical format
- smart folders / searches

 

[alexeismertin]

GMAIL

1. It is free
2. Mega space for storage
3. Works with Apple Mail

 

[AJ Muni]

Thanks guys...

thanks for the info guys....i currently have my aol account being used in apple's mail ....but im confused about the diff of POP and IMAP mail....can i use gmail with apple mail app ??

 

[Project]

The best way to think of IMAP is this.. say you have Mail configured to your Gmail account (presuming it had IMAP support)... say you was away from home and was checking your email on somebodys net connection... read through about 10 of your 15 unread mails, applied labels to some of them, archived some others, deleted some etc... when you came home and used Mail, it would keep track of the emails you had read before elsewhere...

With POP, it would just retrieve all your emails as unread...

I think!

 

[neocell]

..can i use gmail with apple mail app ??

Yes you can
Go into mail>preferences click on accounts (if it doesn't come up in it already) then click the plus sign at the bottom left and fill in your gmail info.

**EDIT**
Here's the gmail link to tell you how to do it

 

[WRXHokie]

It has best features of any free mail service i've seen, plus it has the best spam blocker that i've ever seen.

Not quite John C. Dvorak "i get no spam", but pretty damn close.

 

[ahunter3]

I have to confess I still don't get it.

It's freakin' web mail. I hate web mail. OK, so I can use my regular email program to fetch it. So it's free email. I've already got free email, it comes with my internet access, from my ISP. I've got several dozen gigs of unused storage space on my hard drive, what do I need with extra storage space for email?

All in all, looks like a reasonable solution to a problem I'm not having.

 

[fayans]

Google! Period!

The creators of it rank as the 16th richest in America with $11b

 

[oldpismo]

The best thing about the gmail account from my point of view is that is sorts your emails by conversation. Having all your emails to and from someone on a particular subject in one link makes it really easy to check what was previously said.

The search is also good, and saves having to have a large/confusing set of folders into which you try and assign your messages.

 

[oober_freak]

THE BEST SPAM BLOCKER EVER

Can't agree more. It's just too good. Spam mails which yahoo delivers to my inbox go straight to my Gmail spam list. AFAIK, i haven't received a spam mail which hasn't been detected as spam.

Another thing that rocks is the Java Interface. IMO, that's the best in business.

But, i have seen many many mail servers blocking gmail! I just can't understand why!

 

[0098386]

im pretty happy with my own email service, came with my web hosting. really has got unlimited space (coupled with unlimited space web space too). its all good more than that 2gb you get with Google

sorry... Gmail is good. i hear. if i didn't have my own private email i'd use Gmail over anything else free anyday.

 

[yippy]

I have to confess I still don't get it.

It's freakin' web mail. I hate web mail. OK, so I can use my regular email program to fetch it. So it's free email. I've already got free email, it comes with my internet access, from my ISP. I've got several dozen gigs of unused storage space on my hard drive, what do I need with extra storage space for email?

All in all, looks like a reasonable solution to a problem I'm not having.

Because with gmail you can leave ALL of your email on their server so it is accessible from anywhere AND if something happens to you computer or harddrive you still have it. Try doing that with your ISP email.

 

[wordmunger]

So, can I use my old e-mail address? I know I can forward from that address to GMail, but what I'd like to do is make a seamless transition, so that my reply-to address is the same as well. I think if I could do that, I'd be sold.

 

[opusthe2nd]

You can now stick your own personal email address into Gmail. You can also keep a copy of your mail on the server. I dont use my Gmail address, I use my own address.

Granted, its not IMAP but its almost as good. I shutdown my own personal mail server, after 3 yrs, because I liked Gmail so much and didnt really feel the NEED to have a server.

I am pleased as I could be at this time.

 

[maya]

Ive noticed alot or people raving about having a gmail email account. whats the big deal ?? am i missing out on something?? i had the same thoughts about ADIUM, and downloaded it last night, and WOW is it a great program (i was missing out)... so whats the hype of having a gmail account??? i do know about the 2gb of free space...

Many MRU's have mentioned many of the benefits, however I love the inching storage space which is nearing 3 gigs.

 

[fayans]

So, can I use my old e-mail address? I know I can forward from that address to GMail, but what I'd like to do is make a seamless transition, so that my reply-to address is the same as well. I think if I could do that, I'd be sold.

If you prefer you could have your outgoing Gmail messages to display another one of your email addresses in the 'From:' field (instead of your Gmail address)

 

[eRondeau]

Two More Reasons...

Here's the single best thing about Gmail in my humble opinion...

EmailDisk -- Configure it once and leave it in your dock or on your desktop. Drag-and-drop any file onto the icon and it gets instantly uploaded to your Gmail account. Amazing little Applescript! By far the easiest, fastest way to do an off-site backup of photos, documents, whatever. I love it!

And -- although I use my ISP's POP3 for my "normal" email through Apple Mail, the 50MB they supply can get clogged-up pretty quickly if you send and receive a lot of photos or music. No problem with Gmail. As long as you keep each attachment under 10MB you can have as many as you want.

Google and Apple are both masters of the intuitive user interface. Compare that with Microsoft and their slow, clunky Hotmail -- which has more advertising than a Nascar race by the way -- and you'll quickly realize that Apple and Google were made for each other.

 

[Le Big Mac]

Because with gmail you can leave ALL of your email on their server so it is accessible from anywhere AND if something happens to you computer or harddrive you still have it. Try doing that with your ISP email.

I can do this with hotmail and entourage. Although it's technically not IMAP it essentially is. my home and work accounts sync adn reflect changes/deletions/etc. that I make.

I live in fear they'll cut out the imap/httpmail support, but it's been going well for some time.

 

[fayans]

Thanks for sharing! EmailDisk is another good applescript to use with Gmail.

 

[chokedamp]

You just have to look at all the reply's to see why everyone is so enthusiastic about Gmail. For example, I hate Hotmail: it has an archaical architecture, banners, it's borring slow and it's completely linked to all microsoft net services (which could have all of them the same description).

Gmail is simply to use, awesome fast and, above all, it's Google! XD

 

[WRXHokie]

Basically i think what we're all trying to say is that you have to try it to see how good it is. Its the best spam blocker i've ever seen, and the features are just amazing.