If you haven’t heard about it yet, Google will soon be launching its own free internet e-mail service along the lines of Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail but, ostensibly, better. As part of my having recently signed up for an account with Blogger, I was offered an opportunity to test Google’s Beta version of Gmail. (A side note about that: I read a news item this evening about how Gmail accounts are being sold on eBay for around $70. Why are people scrambling to buy Gmail accounts? Why not just stop by Blogger? Or, for once, am I actually special?) As I’m still looking for a good e-mail service provider, I thought that this would be a good opportunity to experiment with the new service.
So, here’s how you can help: Send me e-mail at pink.dream.poppies – at – gmail.com. Also, comment on this thread as all comments to posts I’ve written automatically get kicked over to my mailbox. I don’t mean to mail bomb me with a million two word messages, just send me little notes to tell me how wonderful I am. It’ll make my day. Also, supposedly, GMail has a 1,000 MB storage capacity per account, so why don’t a few of you send along you favourite MP3 of the moment. I don’t know if I’ll actually receive any 3-5 MB messages, but it’s worth a shot.
Happy mailing. I’ll post comments and observations on their mail system as they occur to me.
Observation #1: Gmail doesn’t work with my primary web browser, Safari 1.0.2. There are later versions of Safari available, but I don’t know if they work with Gmail because they aren’t available for OS 10.2.8. Does anyone out there have OS 10.3 who could tell me if the later versions of Safari work?
Observation #2: A few people have recommended using Mozilla’s Firefox instead of Safari. With the exception of not running GMail, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between Firefox and Safari to my naked eye. However, Firefox is ugly, so Safari it is.
Observation #3: Morphienne in comments is right: the name GMail brings to mind either, a.) a nasty stripper, or b.) a gangster of the Dr. Dre persuasion. I suppose it’s probably too late to tell Google that their e-mail service’s name sucks? I imagine that they focus-grouped it, but that only makes me wonder who on earth they focus-grouped it with.
Observation #4: GMail’s built-in spellcheck is nice to have, but it’s outrageously stupid. The word “isn’t” will be highlighted by the spellcheck, or rather, the “isn” is highlighted as the spellcheck is unable to recognize common contractions.
Observation #5: The ability to sort e-mails automatically using a labelling system is nice but doesn’t seem to be very different from creating subfolders in your inbox. Then again, I’ve actually been using the labels in GMail whereas my Hotmail account merely collects everything in its inbox. The reason for that has less to do with convenience and more to do with …
Observation #6: GMail is, by far, the fastest webmail service I’ve ever encountered. The letters, the various mailboxes, and all of the features load quickly; much, much more quickly than the increasingly sluggish Hotmail.
Observation #7: I got the large attachments; that alone is impressive. It’s nice to have an inbox that doesn’t overflow whenever I receive a large attachment. Send me more!
Observations still to come: a comment on the ads and the mail-scanning required to produce them; the “conversation” feature; sending attachments; whatever else comes to mind..
Just a 2 line message to tell you how wonderful you are! :)
Yes, you are most wonderful, PinkDreamPoppies!
Download Mozilla. It’s a better browser than Safari anyway, and it works with gmail. I also have gmail (because I’m also special). yo.
Hey! I wasn’t offered Gmail! Where’s my slice of the American Dream?
Is anyone else picturing one of those weird, muscular, oiled men from greeting cards middle-aged women give each other every time you read the word “Gmail,” or is it just me?
Erm . . . I think that might just be you, Morphienne.
I sure hope so, anyway.
Eesh.
—JRC
ps. PDP, you’re a wonderful person, a kickass blogger, and generally nifty.
Per your request, “You’re wonderful!” Also sent on pink.dream.poppies – at – gmail.com.
I have gmail through a friend of a friend who works for Google and they give away invites once in a while. I really like it, the fast navigation, sensible keystrokes and the spell checker is pretty damned wonderful.
I found your page through an livejournal.com user named ginmar.
Gillian
Actually I think hotmail is an incredibly dumb name, it just go mainstream enough that no one thinks about it.
By the way, I think you’re actually special, PDP. I signed up with blogger today (I’ve been meaning to for a while, and your suggestion cemented it), but no GMail beta testing opportunity has been forthcoming thus far.
Ah well.
—JRC
JRC, there is a link to GMail on the Blogger homepage sidebar (“As an active Blogger user, we would like to invite you to try out Google’s new email service, Gmail”). If you decide to “give it a whirl”, as they say, they will ask you if you agree that they transfer the information you provided when signing up with them (that is, your user name and your alternative email address) to GMail.
I just started testing it, and one thing I can add to what has already been said is that it makes Unicode writing and reading a lot more stable than Yahoo (you don’t have to manually switch the encoding all the time). At least, the messages mixing Greek, Chinese and French I wrote to myself appeared exactly as I wanted them to (under IE6).
And thank you, PinkDreamPoppies, for letting me know about GMail. I hadn’t been on Blogger for ages.
Ahh, thanks Jimmy. I’ll go check that out right now.
—Myca
Hallo friends! Really nice place here. I found a lot of interesting stuff all around. Just what I was looking for. Great joy!