Google Gmail

Compelling reasons to use the Google Gmail service:

1. Gmail has the best spam filters I've seen. Period.

a. You don't have to do anything to make it work, and it doesn't upset your friends by bouncing their emails and making them register with some service before they can get through to you.

b. If a bit of spam does get through you can "report" it as spam (and delete it with the same click), which improves the Google spam filter even more. Imagine millions of users reporting their spam so that you don't get it. That's the value of a user community, and something that Bill Gates just doesn't get, yet...

2. Gmail is a far superior email handling program.

a. it is browser based, so you can access your mail from any computer on the Internet, which means you don't need Outlook Express, or Outlook, or even Windows, and it works great with either Internet Explorer or FireFox browsers. (FireFox is my favorite for lots of reasons)

b. Gmail gives you lots of ways to reduce the workload of dealing with your mail, so you get it done much faster, and with a lot less hassle. One of the main features of Gmail is that you have lots of keyboard shortcuts which eliminate need for the mouse (which is a huge time waster and aggravation when you already have your hands on the keyboard and then have to move to the mouse for just one click. This single advantage is HUGE.

c. Gmail gives you very good "search" capabilities to find past emails in your archives. You would expect this from Google, king of search.

d. Gmail gives you new ways of dealing with "conversations" (threads) of emails with the same subject. You really have to see this to appreciate it.

e. Gmail gives you a better database of contacts, and even allows the person's photo, as well as other user-defined fields.

f. Gmail gives you easy ways to get your email on your cell phone.

g. Gmail allows "labels" for a much better way of organizing your emails than the Outlook method of "folders". For example, with Outlook, you can put an email into only one folder, but with Gmail, it can have many different "labels" for retrieval under any/all. Google was really thinking straight when they developed this.

h. Gmail auto saves drafts of email as you compose them, just in case something horrible happens that might otherwise cause you to lose your work (power failure, spill your coffee, great looking redhead with pigtails walks by and you click the wrong button...)

i. Gmail has Anti-Virus built right in, (incoming and outgoing) so you don't need Norton, McAfee, etc.

j. Google CALENDAR integration. And if you haven't checked the Google Calendaring system, you have GOT to check that out. I have been using it for many months, and it is outstanding.

j. I could go on and on. This Gmail critter is first class. However, did recently find something I do not like: there is no direct way to add an image into the the body of the email. It can be added as an attachment. I expect that this oversight will be fixed very soon. Google moves fast.

3. Gmail is free, but you need an invitation to join. I have 87 invitations left, so just let me know if I can send one your way. No obligation of course. I don't get anything out of it except a warm fuzzy feeling that I have helped a friend.