Once you get over some of Gmail's differences and experience its benefits you'll see why it's become so popular. But it's as you use it over time that you'll start to realize you're using email differently. For example, it's much easier to manage inbox clutter with Gmail. In part, due to Gmail's storage allotment and archive features.

Archive/Storage Space - In Outlook I waited as long as possible before deleting or storing an email. If there was any chance I might need an email on hand, I'd leave it in my inbox. This made for an ever growing inbox. But with Gmail I only delete the most irrelevant emails. I archive everything else. Currently Gmail provides over 6GB of storage. And it's continually growing. I'm using about 15% of my allotment and since the allotment grows with use, I've never topped 20%. Since I don't need to worry about space, I just archive everything.

When I archive an email I don't add it to an organizational folder I simply click "archive." To get back to an email I just use any words I remember from the email like "mark nashville." Plus, if someone replies to an archived email it comes right back into my inbox, along with the whole conversation. I'm much freer with archiving email now, and that helps to keep an uncluttered inbox.

One other facet of Gmail's archiving and storage is performance. You'd think that a web-based application would be much slower than a desktop email client like Outlook or Apple Mail. But when a desktop client gets bloated with lots of email, it can get really slow. Slow to open, slow to search, slow to filter, just plain slow.

Gmail is really fast regardless of how much email you might have in your archive. And as already mentioned, its search capability is blazing fast.


To me, the biggest benefit of Gmail is being able to access all my email from any computer, anywhere in the world. My email follows me wherever I go. I can access it at the office, at home, at a client's location, at the business center at the hotel, and on my phone.

Gmail can be accessed through any cell phone that has a basic web browser. Google has built cell phone software for many generic handsets, and it has fantastic options for the Blackberry and the iPhone. Seriously, having every email you've ever sent or received on your phone is awesome. I've used Gmail on my Treo to do look up travel reservation numbers, phone numbers, client contact info, or anything in my email or contact list. Once, when arriving really late after a delayed flight, I was able to look up a reservation confirmation email to get in touch with my hotel and arrange for transportation.


Gmail's spam filters are excellent. I've had the same email address for over ten years. I use it freely in signing up for all sorts of web services and newsletters. I do get a little bit of spam, but compared to any other email solution I've used, Google's spam filter is by far the best. And when I flag spam that does slips through, Google quickly learns to filter it out.   next >