The craze for a Gmail account is high, and people are ready to offer things for one. Is it really worth it? Well, is the 1 GB they offer the only criterion? The other sites that offer 1 GB, to my knowledge are Spymac.com, Rediff.com etc. AventureMail.com offers 2 GB. Well, is Gmail all about capacity? Certainly not. I got a Gmail account through an invitation, and it looks like a new dimension in emailing.
First thing I loved is the speed. Let me tell you, its atleast twice as fast as Yahoo! No graphics at all, except the small Gmail logo on top. The servers are fast as well. And, you dont go to a pre-Inbox page, ffrom where you have to click a button to go to Inbox, as in Yahoo/Hotmail. Once you login, you’re taken directly to the Inbox. That save quite some time as well.
Now, the interface. Its so simple, but feature-rich. In order to reply to a mail, you needn’t click a ’Reply’ button and wait for a minute or so before the next page opens. There’s a small message box below every mail you get, and once you place your cursor on that, it become a ’Reply-Mail’ box and you can type the reply right there. The same can be said about Forwarding mails.
Now, why is it a new dimension in emailing? Well, in Gmail the mails are not stored as they’re in Yahoo & Hotmail. They are shown as ’conversations’. For example, If I send a mail to you, and you reply then its Shown in INBOX as ’Me - your_name(2)’ conversation. The number within the brackets indicates the number of messages exchanged. This helps us to manage emails easily.
Gmail has no provision for creating folders, but you can search for emails using keywords. This feature is now available in Yahoo also. Mails can be starred (flagged) to distinguish them, and specified labels can be attached to each conversation. The Labels are shown with messages in Inbox in order to keep us informed of the context of the conversation.
Other features like signatures, attaching files are also available as usual.
One thing, is you can’t open right-click & open mails in new window. This is bit difficult. Apart from this, Google has been facing severe resistance due to its scanning mails, and putting relevant ads policy. They put only text ads. The privacy policy clearly states that all mails will be scanned. But I thought, whats wrong if my mails are scanned by bots, when other humans are not involved. Whats the proof that Yahoo/Hotmail isn’t scanning mails?
Finally, a big Thumbs-up to Google. You have done it again! Gmail has a definite edge over Yahoo!
(Gmail hasn’t yet been opened to public. New accounts can be registered only on invitation by Gmail users or Google staff.)