May 07, 2004 11:26 PM
5818 Views
(Updated May 07, 2004 11:30 PM)
Googlechanged the way we ''search''. Now its changing the way we mail!!
I was really surprised when I heard about Google's new offering - Gmail- promising 1000 MB (1 Gig) of mailbox size. And that too for free!! Couple of days back I was so excited when a friend of mine sent me an invitation to create an account in Gmail.
Before you jump on to a new window in search of Gmail...please have a little patience and read on....
Google is now offering Gmail just to ''some'' users for testing. Its in a beta stage and is not out for grabs in the public domain yet. I do not have much clue how Google is selecting the ''lucky few''. My friend has a blogger account (Blogger is also a tool provided by Goolge) and he got an invitation from Google to have a Gmail account. After using Gmail for a few days he got the privilege to invite a friend. And I became the ''chosen one''.
But its no point rushing to create a blogger account just in hope of getting a Gmail
invitation :-(. I created one a few weeks back, but I am yet to be invited by Google to be one of the testers (and hence the privileged user).So, lets hope for now, we all have great friends who can invite us all to this one-gig-phenomenon.
I am using Gmail for the past few days and these are few realizations:
++ Its great to have 1000 MB.I could survive on my yahoo account giving 6MB for the last 6 years comfortably.So I guess, even if I indulge my self of preserving not so important mails too, I would survive a 100 years on Gmail. I would rather say its like a ''poor man's hard drive'' on the web!!
- A concept of ''archiving'' keeps your Inbox clean. Its like having your selected mails out of sight (..and gradually out of mind)..but never out of your mail box (untill you delete them). It gets stored in a ''folder'' called ''All Mails'' - at your service whenever you need. I am really liking the convenience of archiving coupled with filing (I will explain below).
++ Google extends its strong hold in ''searching'' to this Gmail. Searching for a mail based on sender, subject, word in the body or the date is extremely easy and a great feature to use. I would say the second best feature available apart from the huge space.
It lists all mails in a group of conversations.So assuming you do not delete the mails (which you need not now, atleast for sometime ) you can see the chain of mails corresponding to that ''subject chain'' all grouped together. Pretty convenient if you need to refer back to a previous mail while composing the current one.
It stores all the addresses of mails coming in and going out of the account. Convenient to some extent, especially for lazy guys like me.
It has a concept of filing. Instead of creating folders to arrange messages you create ''labels'' to file messages. Pretty cool feature. You can have a single message in different files, incase you feel it needs to be categorised under diversified labels. You will notice the usefulness of the feature once you start using Gmail. I had a delayed realization on its usefulness.
++ One big plus to jump on this Gmail band-wagon - you might land up getting the user name of your choice as the service stays young. One of the reasons I write this review is to make my friends in MS aware of this - wish this helps you to grab your favourite user name you desired for long.
Google promises privacy of our mails and our personal data.
- Wish this stays as a free service always.
For more information: https://gmail.com
Happy mailing.
