Excellent Free Email . Review on Gmail.com

When it was first launched I was amazed to see 1GB because until that time there was no provider like google. I was using yahoo and hotmail for years but its time for me to shift to gmail...Gmail has some excellent features compared to other providers. Mass space which you can't even complete in matter of months. Fast loading pages when compared to yahoo and hotmail. Excellent mail search feature. Excellent conversation page of emails where no email provider offers (even paid)

But it's not the mailbox size limit that got us hooked, it's the service's terrific built-in search feature (no surprise, considering the source). It lets you do a quick, simple search or use more advanced options to narrow results down. You can also search the Web directly from within Gmail.

The app includes a built-in spell checker, excellent keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to toggle the loading of external images in HTML e-mail easily. And during our test period, not much spam got through Gmail's built-in spam filter, and we could report and remove the few messages that did with a few clicks.

Gmail employs an innovative ''conversations'' view of e-mail threads. This view lets us see entire threads in our Inbox rather than just isolated, scattered messages. We could opt to show all messages in a thread, close all messages, or click on the title of a message in that thread to view single messages, leaving the rest collapsed. We soon found ourselves spoiled by the conversations feature, making it hard to go back to other Web mail clients.

Another attraction for heavy e-mail users: Instead of folders, Gmail uses labels to help categorize mail. Users can apply multiple labels to the same piece of mail, which is a far more flexible method than folders. We also found it easy to add file attachments to our messages, and each message has a 10MB attachment limit (again, more than most other mail services).

?And Here Where It Misses

Gmail isn't perfect, however. First and foremost, many potential users will be put off by the service's ads ? or more precisely, the privacy concerns surrounding them. Gmail scans your messages and serves up targeted text-based ads based on their content. That has a lot or privacy advocates up in arms, and may be too Orwellian for some users.

Also, Gmail lacks the ability to create HTML e-mail (though you can read it), there is no virus filter (though you can automatically block certain file extensions, such as EXE) and there is no way to white-list addresses in the spam filter. The contacts management in Gmail is also primitive at this stage compared with Yahoo! Mail's more advanced address book.

The biggest drawback is the will they/won't they nature of the service. Google says it is currently only offering Gmail ''as part of a preview release and limited test.'' To participate, you need to be invited by another Gmail user who has earned the right to bring in others.

The company won't divulge details on when ? or even if ? Gmail will be made more widely available.

Pros: Huge amount of storage space. E-mail thread view. Built-in e-mail search.

Cons: Ads based on your messages' contents, which may be too Orwellian for some users. Poor address book. No virus scanner. Can't create HTML e-mail. Only a test right now, with limited participation.