Gmail by Google - Anyone Using It?

[Jay Bollyn]

I am not one to jump at the latest tech thing, but Google's Gmail seems like there is no downside to it. I would be interested to hear how Forum regulars feel about this service, which is still in beta. The spam filter is great, and google is very generous with the storage space per account. I primarily use my email account provided by my employer, but there are some things that really don't belong there. That is how I intend to use my new Gmail account - for non-work-related stuff.

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/about.html

TIA - Jay

[Igor Karasik · Accepted solution]

Jay,
I am using Gmail since its launch (~ 1 year) and I am very satisfied.
IMHO, gmail is very stable in spite of its "beta" status. Gmail spam engine is good, gmail support forwarding and POP access.
There is also nice utility called "Gmail drive" that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/E-mail/Mail-Utilities/GMail-Drive-shell-extension.shtml

I used Hotmail before, but Hotmail have many weakness:
-2 Mb mailbox limit !!!!! (only for USA residents limit is more)
-Spam engine miss many spam
-Hotmail account freeze if you not login into account 30 days.
Gmail doesn't have all these defects.

P.S. I have many gmail invites - if somebody still need...

[Ronald Postma]

Hi Jy,
I also use gmail and also very stisfied, much better then hotmail, that also has a 250mb box outside the USA now. I agree the spamfilter from gmail is much better.

Also a great feature is the way you can archieve your mail. You can put stars on inportant mails and only select the starred mail to see the most inportant mails.

You also have a real archieve, You can select the mail and archieve it, it will dissapear from your inbox in a sort archieve, with the search function you can find everything back, that works great. The search finds archived mails and starred mails and mails still in your inbox.

The only thing some people do not like, but I do is that the replies on the mail are displayed together with the original mail in your inbox. You see only one subject with the number of mails send back an forth behind it. So you see everything at once, al replies an mail you send to someoneme. (new mails to or from that person are display seperately)
With Hotmail al mails wil come separetly in you box and I do not like that very much.

Hope this awnsers your question, en you like it as much as I do,
Regards, Ronald

[Basil Vizgin]

Big miss in gmail: you cannot do search in gmail for part of the word:(

[Arturo Galbiati]

Hi,
I'm using GMail from 4 months and all it's ok. Only minior problem is that you have to receive an inviate from an already GMail user if you want to join it.
HTH,
Art

[Hank Eggers]

I JUST ran into the inability to search a partial word yesterday! On occasion I do run into an error where it says "Oops" wait 30 seconds or so. But other than that I love it.

[Allan Bowman]

Jay,
I've been using GMAIL for about a year now and am very happy with it. I had been using Hotmail for my non-work email, but the biggest drawbacks are the lack of forwarding capabilities and POP retrieval (with the free version - although you can retrieve if you had it set up prior to a certain date). GMAIL's forwarding works great - the only drawback is that you can't forward to multiple email addresses (there are workarounds using multiple accounts).

The only issue I have run into is that you can't set it up to retrieve as POP mail from multiple computers (although they may have fixed this by now). Of course you can access via the web interface from anywhere, so it hasn't been a problem.

They are also working on a mobile gmail for PDAs and SmartPhones - not sure when they'll have significant progress (for the moment I use mobile MSN which has a couple of excellent Betas going on).

Allan in Atlanta

[Vibhor Kumar Agarwal]

I have been using it for the past 6 months.

It have quite a different look.

So it depends on you whether you like it or not.

The 2 things that i find great is size and clubbing of same mail trail.

[Hein van den Heuvel]

I've been using it for a year or so.
Generally it works great, and allows me full Email access from any system anywhere in the world.

They say 'don't sort, search' but that does not work for me. I need to label it (=sort) then search.

The Contact managegement is only so so.
Spell checking is only so so.
I badly miss a 'delete-and-read-older' button. It bring you back to the directory.

The Gmail notifier seems useful. I oonly recently startyed using that on my main system. Normally the new-mail count in the window title is a good enough indicator for me toknow whether something new arrives.
Yes that means it polls. This causes some overhead, and appears to leak some memory on most browsers.


I intend to use the pop service to download all my mail as a backup, retain the web interface for day to day usage.

The only major negative I see is that certain sites assume gmail mail is spam!?!?!
Notably HOTMAIL silently swallows gmail originated mail if you don't pay attention.
So you will need an alternative mail system (your isp) to warn a hotmail user to check junkmail and/or ad you as a contact.

Some other sites / companies bounce gmail mail for no good reason (that I know), but there at least you know when/if your mail does not get through.

fwiw,
Hein.

[Basil Vizgin]

Large disadvantage of gmail -- its attachment acceptance. If gmail cannot extract for virus checking archive like .rar, .zip it simple rejects this mail. I never can get mail with .rar at gmail.

[Ronald Postma]

Hi all,
I do not have a problem with .rar or .zip files at all.

What also is a nice feature is that if there a more then one attachments you can download them all at once in a zipfile, it is not real shocking feature, but used it a few of times.

Gmail has it's advantages and disadvantages but if you compare it to any orher webmail I used, it is way better

Regards, Ronald

[Nguyen Anh Tien]

I used gmail (tiennaATgmailDOTcom). I am very satisfied with it.
Some main features i like:
1, extra capacity
2, Mail forwarding
3, mail Filter
4,Tracking
5,User - friendly Interface.
6, No-downtime--99,9999% forme :)
7.POP and IMAP support
I also use it for all non-work purpose, I can forward base on some condition. so that i can foward it to my offfice mail
Enjoy