How to use gmail to manage all my accounts?

November 17, 2004 6:15 PM

i just got my gmail account (yay-no, i have no invitations to give out) and want to use it to manage all my accounts.

1. any recommendations for good freeware to forward yahoo mail without the subscription?
2. will i be as happy as i think with gmail?
posted by elsar to computers & internet (15 comments total)

I think the novelty is gone. I got one and never used it. The only thing that goes there are Google News alerts.

(Sorry, no answer to ? 1.)
posted by MrAnonymous at 6:46 PM on November 17, 2004

It's the only webmail I like, and I actually prefer it to Apple Mail.app. It's not perfect, tho'.
posted by Utilitaritron at 7:45 PM on November 17, 2004

1. Dunno
2. Yes! It's ACE, especially if you use it as intended and don't try to make it act like some older folder-laden much deletions way of working. And now, thanks to POP, you can compose from lovely Apple Mail.app too. Best of both worlds
posted by bonaldi at 7:46 PM on November 17, 2004

1. I don't know about freeware. A long-time Hotmail user, I just sent a Gmail message to my entire Hotmail address book and never looked back.

2. You will be supremely happy with Gmail. Not only will your entire email experience be richer and easier, you will also find that you have more vivid dreams, get lots more sex, eat less dairy products, miraculously find money in the street, and effortlessly charm public officials. And, perhaps best of all, you will never have to encounter "sorry, mailbox full" again.
posted by lometogo at 8:01 PM on November 17, 2004

2. Google might make you pay for POP access at some point. Might.
posted by bitpart at 8:31 PM on November 17, 2004

Please remember that GMail is still in beta.

And it does have service outages (sorry, self-link)

Unless you really want everything free, why don't you just get your own domain and sign up with one of the numerous hosting companies that will give you accounts for a couple of dollars a month?

(I have 5 invites to give out, in case any of you are among the 6 people left on this planet yet to get one.)
posted by madman at 12:32 AM on November 18, 2004

A couple reasons why I'm not using my gmail account and am still keeping hotmail:

1. Its in beta.

2. There is a lot of crazy javascript in there that mucks up the works.

3. The design is user unfriendly with no clear "delete" button. Yeah, its there, but their UI people made it so you never delete stuff, thus helping their datamining efforts. (this may not be an issue for others)

4. I'm a paying hotmail user which means I get some level of support and I have no fear of them shutting down my account by accident and I get 2 GIGs worth of space.

5. I get POP3 access through a little program called hotmail popper.

6. The MSN mobile hotmail site works on my sidekick. The javascript heavy gmail doesnt.
posted by skallas at 3:00 AM on November 18, 2004

Gmail is still a little wonky with Safari and any email solution that includes their right to toss ads all over the place is probably never going to be my favorite. Unlike other people, I haven't quite gotten used to their "conversation" system of threading messages since I'm used to keeping my "to do" list in the inbox which is a few more steps worth of activity using Gmail. I really like it for handling massive attachments, for keeping spam down to a dull roar, and for being the only other email program I have [besides elm] that I could actually call "fast." It's still pretty obviously beta, though, so I am withholding any sort of serious judgment until they roll out a fixed set of features.
posted by jessamyn at 5:29 AM on November 18, 2004

Skallas, I know having to put a check mark in a box and clicking on a tab that says, "move to trash" might appear difficult......

I only use GMAIL at this point. But, because its still in beta, I have a forwarding email address which I use as my main email. Should Gmail go down, I can quickly shift the forwarding address to my pop account which I get free from my ISP.
posted by szg8 at 7:09 AM on November 18, 2004

I use gmail purely as an archive -- I have all the email sent to my primary address copied to gmail. I have used gmail as my primary client for short periods, and I like it. It is an application heavy in Javascript, but JS gets a bad rap because it's easy to write terrible JS -- I haven't any problems with gmail's JS, except in Safari, where the inbox sometimes refuses to load (refreshing usually quickly solves the problem).

[I have 6 invites if anyone needs one. Email addy in my profile, watch for the Knowspam challenge.]
posted by o2b at 7:14 AM on November 18, 2004

szg8, the trash isn't deleted. If you want to delete something, you first have to move it to the trash, then go to the trash folder, then select it again, then delete it. Buncha fuckers.

(I still use it as my main email, though.)
posted by kenko at 7:22 AM on November 18, 2004

Note: Trashed messages more than 30 days old will be automatically deleted.

If it helps, messages moved to the trash will be deleted on their own eventually, kenko.

I use gmail almost exclusively now, and if there comes an option to select different "from" addresses when sending email, it will be wonderful.
posted by shinynewnick at 8:05 AM on November 18, 2004

Google might make you pay for POP access at some point. Might.

They have no plans to do so at this time, according to Gmail help.
posted by oaf at 10:12 AM on November 18, 2004

I haven't tried it yet myself, but supposedly Yahoo POPs! lets you get your Yahoo! mail as if it had a free POP3 server.

On preview: Oops, I just realized you wanted something to forward the yahoo mail, not download it. Sorry. Hopefully, this may be helpful to someone else, though
posted by BevosAngryGhost at 1:42 PM on November 18, 2004

I'm not sure whether you have this yet since Google is introducing this slowly to users (there will be that bold red "New Features!" notice on the top right if you do), but Gmail has recently enabled forwarding to other accounts.

The trouble with these freeware that is becoming available is that Google will eventually change its protocol or find another method to block off these software.

There's also POP.

Of course, I doubt they are going to provide these features for free once it's out of beta.
posted by christin at 7:40 PM on November 18, 2004