Gmail is perhaps the most hyped email server launch since the Hotmail takeover by Microsoft. So I felt really let down when I did not get the invitation to join gmail beta testing or even subsequently latter. The charm of 1 GB mail space which is more than most companies provide in intra company mail servers was really attractive. So imagine my joy when a good samaritan finally decided to send me an invite to join Gmail.

The Backdrop
One thing that attracts many people to Gmail is a mystique charm woven around it. First, the goody of 1 GB mail space was announced. Then, the announcement of conversations came through. Finally, the bad news that it is not available for everybody for free. Only people receiving Gmail invites from others can join in. This add the mystique value with a mad rush to be amongst the few who get these invites. I guess this has worked for Google to work up the initial enthusiasm to another mail server on the block.

The Goodies
1) Mail Space - Obviously the biggest goody is 1 GB mail space which is tons more than any other email server. Now Yahoo has upped its mail storage to 250 MB in a bid to stop the shift of its mail customers to Google. Hotmail is still mulling over it and no steps are in place yet. So Gmail is the undisputed king as far as storage space is concerned. The catch though is that you can only send and receive messages which are of max 10 MB size. So even though the total space available to you is 1 Gig, per mail you still only get 10 Megs. This is something like there is a heaven on the other side of the rat hole. The question is how to get through the rat hole!! BTW, news just in on the occasion of the anniversary of launch of Gmail, they have doubled storage space to 2 GB.

2) Mails by conversation - What this really means is that all replies and future mails on that topic would be grouped together. This would facilitate quick access to related mails and you need not go about searching for them.

3) Text search - Of course, Google’s revolutionary search engine is available to make a text search in any of your mails. So finding mails has never been more easier.

4) Starred Conversation - You can prioritize a few of the conversations as starred conversations and have a quick access to them. Something which we used to do with folders in Yahoo or Hotmail is provided as starred conversation in Gmail. While this is not a big goody, but it is easier to access the starred conversation.

5) Hotkeys - A lot of the mailing commands are configured to hot keys like C for compose etc. This is a good feature of keyboard power users like me who would like to perform most of the tasks using the keyboard rather than moving one hand to the mouse every now and then.

6) Archive - The mails that you might want to retain, but are not interested in showing up every now and then can be archived and would be moved out of your active mails folder. Again in Yahoo and Hotmail this feature can be achieved through folders.

The Turnoffs
1) Show Options - This is the most irritating feature of gmail. Once you open a mail and have read through it and want to send a reply. You first have to go and click on the Show Options menu and then only select one of the activities that can be done like reply, forward etc. I don’t know why Gmail team could not figure out that after reading a mail these are likely to the most common operations and should be directly available to the user to select rather go through the Show Options menu item.

2) Delete - Although Gmail says that there is no need to delete mails, there are lot of mails which you don’t intend to retain at all. For this you instinctly look for the delete option in the top menu and are totally disappointed to find only Archive and Report Spam buttons. Then you drill down to the drop box and there the option to move to trash is present. Again a tedious way to delete mails.

3) Attachments - I have had some trouble downloading pdf attachments through google. It almost always is corrupted. I don’t know what the problem is and have written to gmail staff who keep asserting that it should be fine. But I must say it does not happen for all pdfs, only for some.

Compared with Peers
In today’s mail server scenario, Gmail comes in much handy because of its storage space advantage over the Yahoos and Hotmails. Another advantage is that as Gmail is relatively new, the spam saga in hotmail and yahoo is on a very small scale in gmail. In fact in the past 6 months I have not received a single spam mail till now while my hotmail and yahoo are going ballistic with spam mails.

Usability and UI wise I guess the yahoos and hotmails are ahead of Gmail, but finesse in presentation has never been the strong point of the Google team. Their forte has been performance and features which they have brought into the Gmail system as well.

Summary
Overall, you should really consider moving onto the Gmail specially if you receive a bulk of mails which would need organization and long term retention. You just can’t ignore a 1 GB of mail space.

All in all a 4 star rating to this new kid on the mail server block.

Good turn for the day
I have a few gmail invitations with me. So just in case any of you still don’t have a gmail id and want to have one, can feel free to mail me at ramadvice@gmail.com with your mail id, so that I can send an invite to you. This is strictly on first come first serve basis.

One word of caution, I have heard rumours that Hotmail and Yahoo are putting the Gmail invites into either spam or junk folders. So you would just want to check this folders as well for your gmail invites.

PS: Taken from my review published at http://www.epinions.com/content_170650472068

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