Thanks to Francois for sending me a GMail invite.
I have been using it for a short while today and must say this is by far the best mail client and web app I have ever come across. If they have any plans to sell this thing as a stand alone APP I would be right there buying it.
A few of my favorite things so far:
- Hotkeys, Hotkeys, Hotkeys. This is fantastic it has hotkeys for just about anything and its very Pine like which means I am comfortable with it immediately since I am a old Pine user and made my mutt also use Pine keys
- It is really fast, the web interface responds like a normal app does, this is mostly due to piles and piles of javascript but surprisingly the experience is exactly the same in IE and Mozilla.
- The labeling of emails while initially striking you as being the same thing as folders has one major advantage, you can put multiple labels on a single message. I often have mails that I am struggling to decide where to put them since they cover 2 catergories of folder.
- Searching is very good and fast – I hope it works as well when they reach hotmails user counts.
- Filtering is good while not as flexible as mail filters found in other mail clients it is adequate, you cannot forward mail in a filter to another account for example
- Something that I think is unique in the free mail world is unique email addresses, you can have username+randombit@gmail.com and the filters support checking for this and lets you classify mail based on that.
So far the Spam filters has been disappointing I think they will hopefully improve on that soon. The ads have not been intrusive at all, in fact much google use has made me not even notice them. There are of course privacy issues around all this but I think no more than with any provider of email that you do not control. The provider can read your email, authorities can demand access to your email, and gmail does give you the option to permanently delete email so I think its a small step forward from hotmail or yahoo to gmail in that sense.
There are a number of tips and tricks type sites out there, here are a few I found useful:
Gmail Gems
Gmail Tips
