Will Gmail ever get out of beta?
I’ve had Gmail accounts for a while, but mostly I just used them to link together all my various Google applications (Reader, Analytics, Adsense). Way back when, I had run out of Hotmail space and moved to Yahoo mail. Yahoo mail seemed good enough, but recent changes to make it more modern often timed out on me or just didn’t work. On my netbook, Yahoo mail always complains because the netbook has a smaller resolution (just let me view my damn mail!), and I’ve had multiple times where the webpage just choked. So finally, after not getting Yahoo mail to work for the billionth time, I decided to move over to using Gmail as my primary webmail.
Gmail really is much nicer. I thought at first Gmail was just like any other webmail, but with threaded email chains; however, there are a lot of additional neat features.
- Free POP: Yahoo makes you pay for POP. With Gmail, I can check all my Gmail accounts from one inbox, and reply using the address that the email was originally sent to (though Bunky informs me that this ability is not quite as sneaky as it sounds).
- Labels: It seems simple, but being able to add multiple labels (like tagging) is a lot better than filing emails in a single folder. Also, I like being able to customize the colors. The filters allow me to automatically label most of my incoming mail, so I can pick out important messages quickly.
- Chat: It’s handy, although pretty plain. I tested out the video chat, though, and it’s pretty decent! My netbook has a camera on it above the monitor, and the setup worked well. My main desktop doesn’t have a webcam, though.
- Labs: I like the little modules that you can enable for Gmail. I can do things like drag-and-drop my Gmail layout, and automatically check to see if I forgot to attach the attachment.
In short, I don’t miss Yahoo mail at all. I would completely stop checking my Yahoo mail, but I am too cheap to pay for the POP service to automatically forward all messages from Yahoo to Gmail.
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Haha, I just switched to gmail a few weeks ago as well, and certainly don’t regret getting away from SquirrelMail and pine
I didn’t know that one can automatically check for missing attachments — I shall have to check that out! o_O
Oh man, squirrelmail… Gmail is definitely a step up from that (at least in terms of usability)!
OMFG Gmail is finally out of beta!