G-mail review request

shootist16 said:
Those that have used G-mail... how do you like it?
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I think it's great. I'm gradually moving all, or at least most, of my email there. I particularly like the Firefox extension that keeps and eye on my inbox and tells me when I have new mail. I can even use the gmail POP facility on my pocket PC when I'm near a hotspot.
 
Gmail is pretty much hands-down the best email i've dealt with. i dont even use outlook with gmail, their online interface is great. there are also lots of features that are in beta, for example they can red flag messages that are reported to be "phishing" attacks etc. it's great. if you need an invite email me.
 
Please, don't just say, "Oh, it's great." Please tell me specifically why it's so great. What specifically makes it better?

I, by the way, have not used it.

What I'm wondering is this: I get e-mail, I send e-mail. These seem like pretty simple functions to me. Outlook seems to do them both pretty well. What does G-Mail, or any other software for that matter, do that is so much better?
 
Gollnick said:
What does G-Mail, or any other software for that matter, do that is so much better?
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Save your email.

Gmail gives you a gigabyte of storage for your mailbox. The idea is that instead of deleting messages, you "archive" them and retrieve emails later by Googling your email. It works really, really well. The interface is minimal and clean.

Admittedly the 1-gig archive bit isn't hugely impressive if you already save your email on your computer but with Gmail you can access your email archive from ANY computer.
 
gmail gives you a search and cataloging function that is an extension of google's web search capability. so, you can categorize your emails into folders and then search within each folder or your entire account to find a specific email relating to whatever it is you are looking for. it also offers a sort function that sorts your email as it enters your inbox, I've never made use of that though.

for people who send and recieve a lot of email I think it is shaping up to be a great service.

one negative: users of gmail who use zone alarm free edition and several other free firewall programs can not access gmail. if you have zone alarm pro you can do so, but it is an obvious limitation of gmails beta phase.
 
BuckyKatt said:
Save your email.
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I don't want to seem argumentative here. My goal is not to diss g-mail. I've never even used it. My goal is to understand what's so great about it.

Save your e-mail? I think I have every personal e-mail I've sent or received (except SPAM) since about 1980 which pretty goes back to the beginning of the current SMTP e-mail system. Granted, some of those are on 9-track tapes that I am unlikely to ever read again. And some of it's on 8" floppy disks which I'm certain nobody will ever read again. But I've got 'em.

I've got everything since about 1997 on a currently-readable media. With the exception of a few patent lawsuits, I have only rarely needed to go back more than about three years.
 
roughedges said:
gmail gives you a search and cataloging function that is an extension of google's web search capability. so, you can categorize your emails into folders and then search within each folder or your entire account to find a specific email relating to whatever it is you are looking for.
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Now that is highly significant. When I do have to dumpster diving for an old e-mail, it can be really tough to find what I'm after. Better e-mail searching would be good.
 
Gollnick said:
I've got everything since about 1997 on a currently-readable media. With the exception of a few patent lawsuits, I have only rarely needed to go back more than about three years.
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Whoooooooooooooo.. what's the word I'm looking for here .... hmmm.. maybe obsessive ...? ;) :)
 
I have been using it and the feature that I really like is when someone replies to my email. It remains in the same email and is presented like a conversation. It's easier for me to chat back and forth and keep an eye on a certain email. If you like, Gollnick, drop me an email and I will send you an invite to try.

My BFC username @gmail.com

I find it easier that hotmail in the above aspect.

Hotmail:

Subject: Hi
Sent

Recieve: Re: Hi

Send Re: Hi

Recive Re: Hi

All different emails to open. But with gmail, they are sent to and remain in the original Hi email. If that makes senses :confused:
 
Mr. Gollnick, it's easier to see if you just try it out :p i too like the sort (filter) feature, it's really simple and easy to use. labels and archives just make life easier. when you have an email from someone and you reply, all the correspondence will then be grouped into a "conversation" making everything easier to keep track of. if you would like to try it out, i've got plenty of invites.
 
Threaded Messages.

The emails are all like this forum. All in one list for the same conversation. That way you don't have to look all over crazyness to find the first message and then another message in the middle.

I also like the clean interface and the speed at which it all works. The other big plus is the fact that I can get it from anywhere on just about any browser.

I'm an IT Guy so I simply get tired of trying to "be cool" and have my own email server and junk running at home. I did that and I'm past that. Gmail is simple, fast, has threaded conversations, and searches your emails mad fast. Plus, if you're like me, you just like pretty much everything that Google does :)
 
"Please tell me specifically why it's so great."

There are a number of things I like about gmail, some of which have already been mentioned. One that hasn't been mentioned yet is that gmail lets me send fairly large files. Yesterday, I had to send someone a 10 megabyte jpg. Hotmail won't let you do that; yahoo won't let you do that; mac.com didn't let me do that; even earthlink--which is a paid service-didn't allow sending a file that large. Gmail does allow sending files that big.

--Mike
 
IMHO it is a new and better paradigm of how to handle e-mail. Much has been said already so this may be a bit repetitious:

E-mails are kept much like the threads in this forum, you find one and all those in the thread can be seen and followed in chronological order.

You do not have to put mails in folders, you can make labels and assign labels to mails, you can assign several labels to the same mail, for example some mails can have the label "family", others can have the label "friends", others can have the label "work", some can have both labels "friends" and "work", etc.. you can ask to see all mails with a certain label.

You can do a search much in the same way that you do a web search on Google, type in your search and see the results much like the results in a Google Web search.

All this with 1Gb of space and posibility of sending and receiving large attachments (largest one I've received 8MB).

I'd say: Try it, you'll like it.

Luis
 
Don Luis said:
You do not have to put mails in folders, you can make labels and assign labels to mails, you can assign several labels to the same mail, for example some mails can have the label "family", others can have the label "friends", others can have the label "work", some can have both labels "friends" and "work", etc.. you can ask to see all mails with a certain label.
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You can also label each person in your Contacts list with as many labels as you find appropriate, and any correspondence from them will also be so labelled automatically.

You can go to your Contacts list, click on a particular person's name, and gmail will list all the emails between them and you.

You can go down the Contacts list and check as many names as you like, click on compose, and email all of them together. Then when they reply, all the replies are in the same thread.
 
AM i missing something ? Gollnick mentioned software he's using (Outlook), others are talking about web interface to a service they're using. If it is software that worries you Gollnick, Gmail works with any SSL-capable software (i use Thunderbird for Gmail as a POP3 client myself).

As others have pointed out before, Gmail offers relatively big storage (otrhers claim they are offering up to 1 GB nowadays as well though i kinda doubt they'd allow millions of users to store 1 GB of data on their systems AND keep it all backed-up just in case etc.). They have decent spam filters which weed out garbage before it even gets to your computer. I do not rely on their "archive" and i'm a bit paranoid (no e-mail is ever deleted from Gmail it seems) so i did not place all my eggs into Gmail basket - i use 5+ different e-mail accounts because i prefer it that way. I store all my mail locally and sort it the way i like it, not in some computer halfway across the globe via webmail access.

If you just need a free e-mail service with decent spam filter, good, minimalistic and extremely responsive web interface (i hate cluttered up websites set up on underpowered servers with stupid ads that take ages to load - no ads on Gmail) for easy access when you don't have your regular e-mail client (POP3) handy, and aren't paranoid about company that is renown for their search engine storing each and every e-mail you recieve to be analyzed and whatnot then Gmail is great. If you need an invite let me know.
 
I've been using Gmail for the past 6 months. I forward all my work related email to it, and download via POP to both my iBook (as a backup) and my Treo 650 smartphone (for on-the-go access). I now have almost 4000 messages totalling 975MB.

There are many things to like about Gmail. Overall I find it very easy to use. The interface is clean and responsive, and the search feature is priceless.
 
There is a lot to like about gmail. It's primary feature is that it is web based - so there are pros and cons to a webbased mail client vs. pc based. The basic pro is that you can get to it anywhere you can get to a web browser (which is pretty much almost anywhere). In general, you'll have a lot more features and stuff built into your desktop app (like outlook) - I mean, on your pc you'll have way more than a gig storage (unless you're running a really old pc...). But compared to other webmail apps, gmail gives you a lot for free.

I don't use it as my primary email, but I do forward all my email to it. It has a lot of nice features, not least of which is it's excellent searching capabilities. I don't really need to do any maintenance of those emails (like filing and organizing) because, I just need to search for whatever I want, and so far it's never let me down. A feature that I always wanted was the ability to file emails into more than one folder (gmail calls them labels) - so I could have emails be organized by the sender as well as the project (as an example). I was very excited for this feature, until I realized I didn't need to do any of that because of the excellent search. :)

It's filtering and forwarding is very full featured. It's spam catching is pretty darn good. You can turn on POP (but not IMAP :( ). It has wonderful keyboard shortcuts.

Overall, gmail is a really great offering - especially when you consider that it's free!
 
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