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Moving to Gmail

Posted by Stuart at 03:54 PM on April 07, 2006

The oldest saved email in my Yahoo email account is from June, 2000. Almost two years ago I started using Gmail (Google eMail) a little bit, but recently I have found myself relying on it more and more. I orginally posted my Gmail Review on this site, but now that I am using it almost full-time now, I thought I'd give another review.

Good things about Gmail:

• I like the "Conversations" model. It took me a while to get my head around it, but now I prefer it. Several times recently I have wished for this feature in Yahoo mail.

• The inbox refreshes automatically. In Yahoo mail you have to poll the system by clicking "Check Mail". Ditto for receiving mail from other email addresses.

• The Spam Filter seems to do a better job than Yahoo. (And much, much, much better than Hotmail, which I have given up on altogether.)

• There's not a useless splash screen like there is in Yahoo and Hotmail. When you log in, you go directly to your Inbox.

• The address auto-complete works on Safari on my Mac. Yahoo doesn't.

• The "Web Clips" at the top of my Inbox are completely gratuitous, but I still like them and click on them every now and then, just for fun.

• Search is much, much faster on Gmail than Yahoo Mail. I think it gives better results too.

• You can chat in your Inbox. This is another somewhat silly feature, but I still use it every now and then. I'd use it more, if more of my friends did.

• I think it's cool that the amount of storage space increases every day. Right now I have 2.711 GB of space, compared to Yahoo's 2 GB. Not that I will use this space any time soon, but eventually I will.

• Gmail has hot keys. When I am reading an email, I can type "R" and the reply box shows up. This is great for me, because, quite frankly, using a mouse hurts my wrist so I try to avoid it as much as possible.

OK, what are the bad things about Gmail:

• The "address book" (called "Contacts") is very lame. It doesn't allow me to add much information about my friends. I still use Yahoo Address Book 100% for this functionality.
  

Hmm. That wasn't a very long list. And that is why I find myself moving from Yahoo to Gmail. So, if you have my Yahoo email address in your address book, feel free to update it to Gmail. That's sgtowns AT gmail DOT com. Oh, and I also have a lot of invitations to Gmail. If you want to try it out, send me an email at the address above and I will be glad to give you one.