It’s everywhere you want to be:
Unlike Outlook, or another desktop application, Gmail can be accessed from any computer that has access to the internet. This is one reason why so many businesses have switched to using Gmail. It’s far easier than setting up external access to the company servers for checking your work email off-hours. And don’t worry about the bells and whistles that you get with a desktop client. Even if Gmail doesn’t have something, a calendar for example, there is likely a Google application that will allow you to get the same functionality. One that integrates smoothly with Gmail.

Near-unlimited storage:
Gmail offers over 6 gb of storage for old messages. To put it in perspective, I have thousands of old emails, and I’m using less than 1% of that. This is one thing that Gmail really does well. You never have to delete emails to make room. Additionally, Gmail allows you to send attachments of up to 20Mb in size. In case that means nothing to you, that’s large enough to send dozens of pictures or even a couple of videos or mp3s.

Instant search:
Gmail allows you to search all of your emails, instantly. It also searches all messages you’ve deleted, in case you’ve accidentally trashed an email you need later. This makes finding emails a snap. No need to save them in your inbox. Results are accurate and quick.

Great spam control:
I used to get 100 spam emails a day with hotmail, and almost as many as that when I used outlook. With Gmail, I barely ever get spam. If spam gets through, there’s a ‘Report Spam’ button that will report that email and block you from ever getting any more emails from that person or company.

Conversations:
This is one of Gmail’s cooler functions. If you email a friend back and forth about a single topic, all those emails will become grouped in one conversation. This keeps your in-box clutter-free and also makes it easy to look at previous emails in a discussion without searching them out. It may sound a little confusing, but it’s done automatically and takes no time to get the hang of.

Instant Messaging:
Gmail allows you to IM your friends from a number of services, directly from your in-box. I leave a tab with Gmail open all day. I can chat with my friends without needing to download any programs to my computer, all while browsing my email. I’ll be diving into this feature more in-depth in the next part of this series.

Labels:
Instead of folders, Gmail allows you create labels for emails. You can therefore assign multiple labels to each email. Say you get an email from your dad about your brother’s wedding. You could label it “Dad” and “Brother”. Then clicking on either label will pull that email up. Labels make far more sense than folders, though it took me some time to get used to them. Once I did, I could never go back.

Filters:
This is a little more advanced, and a topic for another day, but gmail allows you to creat custom filters that will allow you to automatically delete, archive, forward or label any email that matches the rules you create. For an example, any emails I get from Netflix get forwarded directly to my wife, without ever hitting my in-box. Any that contain certain words get marked spam and deleted. Again, without ever getting to my in-box.

POP mail:
Not sure what that is? If you’re using Outlook or another desktop client, you’re using it. It’s how you get email from your server if you have a website. It’s a little too complex to get into for today’s purposes, but Gmail has walk-throughs for you if this applies.

Instant conversation updates:
If you’re writing an email and someone sends you a more recent email with the same subject, a note will pop up at the bottom of the screen offering to update your conversation. This is great for email discussions with multiple people.

The rest of the usual goodies:
Contact organizer, Vacation auto-reply, Automatic Signatures, etc.

If those reasons aren’t enough for you to switch to Gmail, I don’t know what else to say. I started using Gmail a few years back, when it was still in beta, and I’ve never looked back. If it sounds good to you, and you want to start the switch, then read on. If you don’t think it’s worth the hassle, then I suppose this is where we part ways.

Still here? Great. Let’s rock.

The first thing you need to do is head over to Gmail and sign up for an account.

After you sign up for an account, you’ll see a screen that looks a lot like this. Of course, you won’t have any emails yet, but you get the idea.

As you can see, Gmail is clean and compact, without a lot of the extra junk that other email applications have. The menu options are easy to find and intuitive. Let’s get into those options now.

The sidebar menu is fairly easy to figure out. There are the usual options for inbox, sent mail, trash, drafts and spam. Additionally, you can see an option for starred messages. These are any emails you choose to ’star’, that are important to you. Clicking this will load every starred message. You can also see options for chat and contacts. Clicking contacts will open your contact section, allowing you to create new contacts, group your contacts or browse existing contacts. Clicking the chat function will open up a new chat window in the lower right of your screen. Check this screen-shot out to see what I mean.


As you can see, the message pops-up in the bottom of the screen, while not interrupting your email. You can continue to browse emails while you chat. As I said, I’ll dive more into that tomorrow. But this should show you how nice a feature it can be. Looking at the screen shot above, there is a spot that says “More Actions”. This is where you can choose to assign labels to emails, delete them, archive them, etc.

Speaking of labels, once you assign labels to an email, you will see those labels appear in the menu on the left, under the main options. Here’s a screenshot to show you what I mean. It’s pretty simple to get the hang of, though you might miss your folders at first.

There’s not much more to tell you on the matter. Well, actually, there are a hell of a lot of things to tell you, but they can be firmly planted in the “Advanced” category, and will be grist for another article. One last thing to show you. This might be minor, and not the greatest thing in the world, but I love it. After you delete an email, you get an option to Undelete it. See what I mean here.

Like I said, not the most impressive feature, but I sure love it. As you can see, Gmail is pretty close to a perfect email client. But don’t take my word for it. Try it. Give it a spin. If you don’t like it, no harm, no foul. But I think, once you try it, you won’t leave.

Be sure to check out the previous article in the series, Feed Your Head and the next article, Instant Gratification.

** Lest you think I’m on Google’s payroll, let me set you straight. I WISH I was on their payroll. Those guys are loaded. It just so happens that several of the applications I’m going to talk about this week are google products. In fact, there are three more google applications to come this week. What can I say? Google knows how to make indespensible services. It’s as simple as that. But still, if anyone from Google is reading this and wants to drop me some cash, I wouldn’t say no.