As I’ve mentioned before, I hate write-your-email-in-the-subject emails. Now that LifeHacker asks the questions once again, I’m ready with an answer.
Now, the question from my side is: should we repeat and promote such discussions once in a while to let the rest of the world know what we think, or should we quietly avoid them, not to give any ideas to the wrong-doers?
So far I’ve read that one of GMail‘s goals is changing people’s attitude towards their email storage. With huge, and evergrowing, inbox sizes people don’t have to delete any messages anymore. They still can, if they wish so, but they don’t have to.
After using GMail for some time, I noticed that one of my other attitudes is changing. I’ve always been on the opposite side of HTML email lovers. And I still believe that HTML email is evil. But there is a but.
With GMail, all email is HTML. I mean you’re already in the browser, aren’t you? So, how does this affect things?
GMail can be used to email yourself some pretty looking HTML emails. Things like lists, highlighted text (think: yellow marker), and links with descriptive captions instead of Really Long URLs ™ can really enrich your email experience. Notes, outlines, and shopping lists are among some really frequent content.
And the beauty of it is that with GMail you are always sure that it will display exactly as you wanted it, and that you won’t get complains like “Send me the text version of that”, granted that you only email yourself and other people who use GMail (except those psycho geeks who use GMail via POP access only, with a text-only mail client).
If used appropriately, this can make world a tiny bit better. And you know, I’m all for that.
I have finished my migration to GMail process. I have all my email archives uploaded, marked as read, and most of the messages labeled. Of course, as with any migration, there were some rough edges and few messages just didn’t make it through, while a few others were dumped into archives without being properly categorized. But overall I am happy. Those few messages that didn’t get through were probably useless anyway. And categorization is not vital anymore with Google search engine behind the inbox.
‘All Mail’ suggests that I have slightly more than 20,000 discussions. In terms of space usage, I am at 42% – 1156 MB used out of 2754 MB. That’s not too bad. My current new mail rate is not that high, and GMail is constantly increasing the size of the mailbox. I think it’ll be enough. If nothing else, I know how have a lot of stuff that I can delete to clean up some space. Some of the messages date as far back as 1999 – surely there’s something that I won’t even miss.
I am doing the biggest email move ever. I am migrating all of my email to GMail. That includes archives, which, in some cases, have threads dating back to 1999. That’s A LOT OF email.
Obviously, my GMail account is a huge mess right now. I’ll try to clear it up as soon as possible, but for the meantime, if I miss an email from you, please, stay with me. I’ll get it al in order ASAP. Note thought, that just the upload process will take around two to three days.
The script I’m using for this process is Mark Lyon’s GMail Loader. I’m usin gthe older .4 version, because I didn’t have enough Python librarires for the GUI. Neither did I need it. The script works like a charm.
I have fully moved to GMail. I have yet to import my existing archives, but I lovin’ it already as it is. My exim+procmail+mutt setup is great, but GMail is better for my current needs. It is, of course, less configurable, but Things That I Really Care About ™ (TTIRCA) do work and need practically no configuration.
Stars, labels and filters are easier to use than my previous configuration. Contact list is better – complete with pictures and total integration. Management of multiple accounts is easier done – by default GMail replies from the correct address. Searching the mailbox is better and faster – after all it is Google we are talking about – nothing can beat that! Attachment handling with image previews and Word document automatic convertions to HTML are beautiful. Multilanguage spellchecking is nice. And there is even that Google Chat thingy too. And, of course, it all works faster off the Google server farm than from my home server.
For the time being, I am really happy about my email. And I couldn’t care less for the Big Brother issue. At least, not right now.
Ok, if you one of those people who need to hear something bad, I’ll give that. If I could change one thing about GMail, it would be with Quick Contacts. Currently, if I specify that I want a person to be included in Quick Contacts, I get as many entries, as the number of this person’s email addresses. That’s just wrong. For the Quick Contact I need only one email. I can be asked to specify which, or the default one can be used, or the most frequently used one – I don’t care. Just make it one, not all of them. That’s it. This is my only complain.