Why I Switched To GMail
I recently switched over to google's free gmail client. I'd been using Thunderbird for a couple years and really liked it. But moving to gmail has definitely simplified things for me and greatly improved the usability of email.
Here are some of the reasons I switched:
Migration was simple (from Thunderbird) - since Gmail supports IMAP I was able to import all my emails from Thunderbird easily. Switching to a web based email client feels lighter...it is!
Searching emails has never been better - it's google! I thought I might miss folders - I don't; they were sort of cumbersome to manage anyway.
No more having to deal with backing up my email. It's always there and probably backed up in triplicate by the google team, right? (Okay, the truth is I have no clue where gmail is storing the bits to all my precious emails. But I do have confidence/hope that their backup measures are sound, safe, and reliable.)
Less spam - whatever gmail is doing, they seem to eliminate most spam for me. So much so that I find myself visiting the spam folder just to see the latest trends in spamming.
Anytime, anywhere email - whether I'm in my secret lair at home, at work, or in another country, checking all my email accounts is easy with gmail. Anywhere I have access to a browser, I have access to all my email.
Powerful filters - gmail's filters help me to automatically label (tag) all types of email funneling through my inbox. This is especially useful for managing emails from multiple consulting projects, clients, and of course all my email from family, friends, fans, and associates.
Continual innovations - new features and enhancements are continually streaming in, and, so far at least, with no disruption.
7 gigabytes (and counting) of storage space - I'm only using a fraction of what gmail is currently offering. Sure, there are some AdSense advertisements, but their contextual nature fits somewhat descreetly into the mix - I actually think they're somewhat interesting. And every day the storeage space is increasing, presumably faster than I can fill it all up with new mail.
Attachments made easy - whether you're viewing photos or office documents, gmail provides alternative renditions (e.g., html and/or PDF) to these attachments. So when Bob at ACME sends me the latest widget specification as an MS Word document or Excel file, I no longer have to launch a completely separate application to view the contents of his 2 sentence draft. That's such a useful feature. And to make it even better, it's easy to add Bob's specification to google docs from gmail so we can both access the document and manage it from a single location, rather than as a perpetual email attachment. And this of course is also hugely helpful- but my raves for google docs will need to happen on another Friday post!
Mobile enabled - even though I'm not doing email on a mobile device yet, it's comforting to know that gmail is ready when I am.
gmail works great for me - I suspect I'm not alone!
Rob
