Gmail Review

The second is my professional email address, the one my company supplies when I deal with clients, customers and internal affairs at work.

The third is what I call my social address.  I am mostly anonymous at this address which I give to companies that offer me coupons, travel discounts, online games, newsletters and sports information.  For this account I use Google Mail.

This has worked out quite well for one reason; the amount of spam I see is tiny compared to the amount of spam I receive.  Fortunately, my personal email address has no spam since I give only to trusted parties.  My second one is relatively free of span since my employer filters out most it and stores it separately just in case I want to look at it. 

My Gmail account, because I give the address to everyone else, receives about 80 to 90 spam messages per day.  They are stored in a separate folder which I empty daily.  Otherwise Google deletes span messages older than 30 days.

I have found that if a spam message worms its way into my inbox that using the "This is spam" feature of Gmail that it doesn't get in again.  Likewise, on the rare occasion that a valid message ends up in span, the reverse is possible by using the "This is not spam" button. 

Unlike Yahoo and Hotmail (among others) Gmail has another delightful feature-little advertising.  When the inbox is displayed there is only one ad at the header of the email messages.  I hardly notice it.  When a message is opened Google adds a sidebar on the right of the screen with, more or less, related links (and just links not icons) that might be appropriate.  Likewise, I hardly notice these since I am using the left hand side of the screen where I can select options..

Just to test Google Mail I set up another account and did absolutely nothing with it.  After four months I had one message-a welcome from Google Mail.  Conclusion, Google doesn't give out addresses.

Gmail has all the features of your Internet Service Provider email address: "folders," address books, search options with filters and lots of storage space.  My Gmail account capacity is almost 6GB.

There aren't really folders but what Gmail calls labels.  For example, Viewpoints is new website for me.  I just joined and Viewpoints communicates with me via my Gmail address.  So, when I received an email from Jolie I created a new label called "Viewpoints."  On her email I applied that label and then archived the message.  Several other messages from Viewpoints have arrived.  I label them and then archive them.  If I want to see all the Viewpoints messages I just click on that label in the labels window on the left side of the screen and all the Viewpoints messages appear. 

One other feature I like about Gmail is that it can handle small databases as attachments, especially the new format of databases in Microsoft Access 2007.  Hotmail can't and Yahoo is undependable.  Google now allows attachments as large as 20MB so you can also send videos.  If you're into chat or dolling up your email with emoticons Gmail is for you.  And there's even more features with slideshows and mobile access.

Try it, you'll like it.