E-mail almost worth paying for (gmail.google.com)

Member Name: wxcat

Product:	gmail.google.com
Date:	02/11/09 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Supremely versatile, features, funkiness, fast, tons of space

Disadvantages: None

Google Mail (or Gmail) was launched in April 2004 by invite only, and invites were extremely sought after for over a year, and were for sale on eBay for fair amounts of money. I was very lucky to get an invite in September 2004, when I signed up for the Beta Mail and were immediately impressed by how fast and good it was to use. Moving from the slow, small, and clogged Hotmail service it was a breath of fresh air and the two other main e-mail providers Yahoo and Hotmail soon overhauled their offerings. Even when I had joined up invites were very hard to get hold of, I only had several invites for my first 12 months using it!

Gmail is based in java so very fast to load, and pretty universal working in every browser I have tried it in. They claim it runs faster in Google Chrome, but I haven't tried and it runs fast enough in Mozilla Firefox. Starting with 1 GB of storage space it's constantly expanded and still is expanding and now at 7.5GB.

Gmail groups e-mail messages in conversations, or by sender. If you are having a conversation by e-mail, it will put them together and only show you the last e-mail. If you load up the conversation it gives you the subjects of messages you've read, and bring up the new e-mails in full if they're new, it cleverly minimizes the bits from previous e-mails so you only see bits that are newly written, and new images. It also groups together e-mails from the same sender within a 24 hour period if they are similar, like duplicates so they don't clutter up your mailbox. I often find on my Blackberry I have tons of e-mails, and back on my pc there are only several as they are threaded. I have never found this yet to have done it incorrectly.

When you receive mail it goes into your Inbox and marked as unread, highlighted at the top. After you have read an e-mail it loses the highlight. You then have a couple of choices of what you can do with it. You can mark it as Spam if it is, you can Delete it, or you can do what Google recommend you can do and Archive it. This means you keep all you're e-mails forever so you can find anything you want just by searching your mailbox, as you keep saving e-mails your mailbox is also constantly expanding.

Spam and Trash messages are kept for 30 days before being deleted. I generally run at using 10-11% of my mailbox, I archive everything important and interesting and generally delete all the rubbish and marketing material, which in 5 years has meant me keeping about 13000 messages! The spam filter on Gmail works pretty well, and keeps a fair amount of spam in the spambox and a lack of interesting e-mails that get tagged as spam, I do have a quick look every few days though to make sure. I have found one this that is struggles with, is when spam senders replicate the sender as myself and the Gmail spam filter really struggles with that, especially if the subject of the e-mail seems real, or at least to a spam filter. This has resulted in a few a day recently at times, until the spam filter catches up with itself.

You can also mark your mail with stars, to remind you it's there, or mark read/unread as required. There is a project called "Labs" which lets you add customizations, themes, addons, and applications to your Gmail inbox, very much like the iphone applications, there are things that do all sorts of things. I've got a new theme on my Gmail and have added several apps on to help me use Gmail easier. Generally most the labs are made to help you do your job easier, but there some games and instant messenger's apps.

The biggest application for Google is Google Chat which is an instant messenger program that sits neatly down the left hand side of your mail inbox, it can do chat and video chat, and adds anyone you e-mail who also uses Gmail so you can build up a weird set of contacts. No one ever tends to use Google Chat if they have MSN Messenger as it is very basic, but I do chat to some people on there. This also has the basic Gmail Notifier built in which pops up in the bottom of your screen when you have new e-mail arriving in your inbox. The notifications are excellent for timing, they are quicker than your inbox can update in the browser.
The only other place I access Gmail is on my mobile, first a couple of years back on the Orange M700 Windows Smartphone and now I access it on my Blackberry. Both my original smartphone and Gmail Mobile in those days were fairly simple, and realistically you could only view and read e-mail in those days. Now Gmail has come a long way and reading and replying to e-mail on my Blackberry Storm as easy as doing it on my pc at home. The Blackberry Gmail program really is a pleasure to use, very easy and quick to view new e-mails, quick to load, easy to reply, and means I can keep up with my e-mail easily on the move.

Gmail have had a couple of problems over the last year when the system has gone down for a couple of hours at a time. Inconvenient but the system is fairly robust other than this, and unless they have future problems, I won't be turning anywhere else.

I have fell slightly in love with Google Mail since I got it, I find it incredibly versatile and easy to use. Finally the fast e-mail provider with tons of space and lots of funky new features wows me, I definitely haven't fallen out of love with it yet.

Summary: A pleasure to use, and you now don't even need an invite!