GMail: Why it makes sense
I have this website. I have private email addresses from this site. Then, why would I need a service like GMail, you might ask. I did some thinking and here’s what I came up with:
My private domain is up since 2002—close to two years now. The domain initially had 50meg space for content plus email (which was fine) until recently. Sometime this year, I upgraded to another option where I now have about 800MB in addition to site related goodies. So, the space is there for all I want, and the POP3 and IMAP accesses, to my mailboxes, too are largely good. So, what’s the problem?
I just looked at my email client at home—Outlook Express. Everytime my machine has crashed or I’ve done something to it, I’ve lost my perfectly good email backup (rather no backup at all). Using OE is purely by choice, before someone jumps at me to say–hey! use this or use that (I use Lotus Notes at work and I don’t like it; nor do I like Eudora, Outlook, Pocomail, whatelse is there?). I use POP instead of IMAP mostly (call me space conscious; what with a habit now cultivated having used so many limited inboxes). So, all my email is downloaded to the local machine and it generally stays there until something strikes. So in effect, I don’t have an email archive.
When my mail is on my computer, I have to carry it around.
I don’t like the interface that are available on my domain (I have three options to read my email by the way: Neomail, Horde and SquirrelMail).
So lets look at the keywords: space, client, carry, archive and interface. How does GMail solve this?
- Space: 1GB of it for purely messages!
- Client: Web based (no reliance on a software needed).
- Carry: Nothing to carry around (not even my pocket POP or IMAP client on a USB drive!).
- Archive: Better and very effective archiving features, and they are searchable with what better than Google technology.
- Interface: Very simple and lean (and unobtrusive text ads that are quietly tucked on the side—unlike pictures, flash and animations in Hotmail and Yahoo! that makes your account look totally unprofessional, basically like shit).
I think, that’s enough for me to use my GMail account as primary and mainstream.
Update—Getting More Out Of Gmail (Found this via Kottke.org).
Update 2—I have lately noticed that Gmail is better than most services in marking SPAM so that you don’t see any unwanted ad-messages in your inbox. Occasionally you can view the spam folder just in-case if any particular one isn’t a spam. So far, I haven’t marked a single one from that folder as not-spam. So, Gmail’s spam filters are good at catching the dirt.
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Sep 4, 04 at 03:48