Many of us have heard about Gmail and many of us have an email account with them. for those who dont know gmail, it a mail program from google. one of the popular email website and a client after yahoo. in india we have yahoo, hotmail, rediff, indiatimes and gmail. but gmail differs from them. why because it support pop3 and imap. that is you can view and download emails in outlook or any other email program. you may store emails as offline and read it from outlook. it has less spam too compared to yahoo.
            
           i have yahoo and gmail, but yahoo get most spam and gmail only less. message size quota of yahoo, rediff is unlimited but for gmail it is around 6gb.

Gmail differs from others. i will tell you.

         1 :   Gmail supports pop3 and imap. you can access it from outlook or email client
         2 :   Gmail can be used as virtual drive
         3 :   Less or no adds. 
         4 :   You can chat inside the email program

I will explain the basic steps of configuring gmail to use pop and smtp on outlook 2003

First you need to enable Pop on your gmail account. to do that login to your gmail go  to settings click forwarding and pop and  click enable pop for all mail. click save changes

1 : open outlook --> Click on Tools menu --> Click Email Accounts -->Click ADD New Email --> Click POP3
2:  Enter your name, Then Gmail email Address,Gmail user name that is your email and password
3 : Next enter the pop server: pop.gmail.com and smtp server : smtp.gmail.com.
4 : Now Click More settings --> Click outgoing server --> Click My outgoing server requires authencication  --> Click use the same settings as my incoming mail server
5 : Then Click Advanced. Enter incoming server as 465 and outgoing as 995. Click This server requires authencication (SSL)  for both pop and smtp
6: Choose leave a copy of message on server and click finish

Now you can see the Emails inside your gmail accoung poping up on your outlook.

Next lets look how to use gmail as virtual drive. i think gmail still supports it.

download and install a free program call gmail drive shell extension from the link below. you should have admin rights that is the pc should be yours.

link 1 : http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/GMail-Drive-shell-extension-Download-15944
.html

Link 2 : http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

after installation open My computer and you will see an icon called as gmail. double click and login with your gmail id. you will be able to see a virtual hard disk. here you can copy, paste, store any documents. the maximum file size is 10mb.

Also You can add a friend and chat. to do that from the left side of gmail window simply enter an email and click add. that is it. when the friend accepts the invitation you can chat.

Gmail can be viewed in html and basic. difference is the interface.

Gmail can be viewed in mobile also. visit : http://googlemail.com/app

This are the few useful features of gmail. if you like just go to http://www.gmail.com and click on signup. existing users hope this review is useful.

for more help on gmail please visit the website http://mail.google.com/support/

Thanks,

Anil kumar

Software version:

Gmail Beta