Making the Switch to Gmail
by Dave Tufts - April 24, 2008 / 4:40pm
I'm doing it.
As soon as I finish this blog, I'm switching to Gmail.
For a couple years, I've used Gmail for personal stuff. Now I'm moving my professional life into Gmail. Everyone seems to hate Gmail at first, then grows to love it—and I want to know what that love is.
Right now I'm using Thunderbird as a desktop mail client. All 12,000+ emails, dating back to 2001 are neatly compartmentalized in folders—organized by client, task, or even status. What's my team working on right now? I'll check the "In-Progress" folder. What's next? Look in the "To-Do" folder. What terms did we agree to on for the first version of that project? Just peek in "Old > A > astonmartinlotus.com" and it's there.
Since I often reference historic client emails, I can't just trash Thunderbird. Instead, I'll delete my accounts in Thunderbird, which will keep all the messages while removing the ability to Send and Receive.
I'll move my address book to Gmail, but not any messages. I'll figure out labels. I'll try Prism or Mailplane. A couple weeks ago I set up all my POP accounts to forward a copy to Gmail, so there's already plenty of messages waiting for me.
I'm sure millions of other people have been in the position I'm in now and lived to tell about it. Any advice for making the switch from folders and desktop-apps to labels and Gmail?
As soon as I finish this blog, I'm switching to Gmail.
For a couple years, I've used Gmail for personal stuff. Now I'm moving my professional life into Gmail. Everyone seems to hate Gmail at first, then grows to love it—and I want to know what that love is.
Right now I'm using Thunderbird as a desktop mail client. All 12,000+ emails, dating back to 2001 are neatly compartmentalized in folders—organized by client, task, or even status. What's my team working on right now? I'll check the "In-Progress" folder. What's next? Look in the "To-Do" folder. What terms did we agree to on for the first version of that project? Just peek in "Old > A > astonmartinlotus.com" and it's there.
Since I often reference historic client emails, I can't just trash Thunderbird. Instead, I'll delete my accounts in Thunderbird, which will keep all the messages while removing the ability to Send and Receive.
I'll move my address book to Gmail, but not any messages. I'll figure out labels. I'll try Prism or Mailplane. A couple weeks ago I set up all my POP accounts to forward a copy to Gmail, so there's already plenty of messages waiting for me.
I'm sure millions of other people have been in the position I'm in now and lived to tell about it. Any advice for making the switch from folders and desktop-apps to labels and Gmail?
Add A Comment
Statements and opinions expressed in this blog and any comments
made are the private opinions of the respective poster, and, as
such, iMarc LLC is neither responsible nor liable for such
content.
RSS
6 Comments
I use Gmail for mailing lists, but it's just not very well suited to tracking and acting on individual messages within the firehose of email that I manage each day.
Your mileage may vary.
- Archive instead of Delete
- Spam filtering just works
- Conversations are priceless
- Labels instead of Folders
- And searching: Gmail is like a huge database, each conversation has a URL...
If you miss all the nice Mac Desktop features: You may like Mailplane (http://mailplaneapp.com) to create attachments, take screenshots, get growl notifications, integrate with iLife, OmniFocus etc.
So: Gmail is good choice!
Also, I should note that I'm using hosted GMail, so the MX servers for my domain are GMail servers, so that everything goes directly into GMail. This also gives me a nice web-based interface for managing all of my domain's email needs.
If there was a way for me to use GMail for work, I would! We're stuck with Outlook/Exchange unfortunately.
As for the above comment about archive vs. delete. I can't stand that. That is what trash cans are for. I should be able to decide if an email is deleted. If I mistakenly delete one, I retrieve it from the trash. If I empty the trash, those emails should be GONE FOREVER.
There is a great thread about getting GMail to play nice with Mail.app, iPhone, Thunderbird, etc here. It took me a while to get GMail to work the way I wanted it to on Mail.app, but now I couldn't be happier.