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Infomaniac’s Top 10 Reasons I use Gmail

Gmail, Google’s web-based email, is finally open to the public though it is still labeled beta (I guess it’s hard to get rid of the beta label these days) and I thought I would tell you why I use Gmail.  Why do a need a Gmail account when I already have a few email addresses through my Internet service provider and my own domain name?  I say, why not? 

Not a good enough reason for you, then let me list 10 reasons why I use a Gmail account.

1.  Lots of Space.  I get 2gb of space for all of my mail.  That’s a great deal of space to work with.  My ISP only gives me 10mb, yikes!  With the archive and search functions I could save email for years.

2.  Web-based email. Since it’s web-based  I have access to all of my email online along with emails I have sent and forwarded and contacts within Gmail on any computer.  No more syncing email between my desktop and laptop with Outlook.

3.  Labels.  Gmail uses labels to classify emails.  The nice thing about labels is I can apply more than one to an email making it much easier to categorize and search for emails.  No more figuring out which folder to put an email in, now I can have it under multiple labels.  Very nice and handy feature.

4.  Manage multiple email addresses.  With Gmail I can get and send mail from other email accounts.  This is especially helpful to me so I can manage the email addresses I have through my domain name since I don’t like their web-based email clients.  And, if I give friends or family an email address through my domain I can set it up for them so they can use Gmail and get 2gb of space with Google Apps for Your Domain.

5.  Managing sign up emails.  I use my Gmail account for all the sites I sign up for and immediately tag and archive the confirmation emails as Membership to get them out of my inbox.  If I need to find one of those emails it is easy to do a search within the label and I’m all set.  Otherwise it is labeled and archived.  It keeps my inbox clean.

6.  Use as a bookmarking tool (idea via Lifehacker).  I use del.icio.us for public bookmarking but I like to also keep track of sites and blog posts that give me blog posting ideas and I needed a way to do it effectively.  Lifehacker’s Hack Attack: Bookmarking with Gmail gave me an easy way to use Gmail as a personal bookmarking tool.

7.  Conversations.  Gmail will group my conversations in regards to a topic together so that they appear all together with the original message so  I don’t have to go searching for back and forth replies.  It’s appears like a thread in a forum.

8.  Mail via RSS.  I use Netvibes to manage all of my RSS feeds and I have an RSS feed of all of my unread emails at a glance.  It also works with Google Personalized Home Page, Google Reader and any other RSS reader.

9.  Gateway to other Google Applications.  By having a Gmail account I now have a central access point to other Google Applications like Google Calendar, Google Reader, Personalized Home Page, Docs and Spreadsheets, etc.

10.  Free, easy to use, virus free.  Gmail is free, easy to use and automatically scans incoming and outgoing attachments for viruses.  It is ad-supported but I don’t mind ads as long as they don’t interfere with my mail.

I’m still not ready to give up using Outlook for my main email but maybe that is something I will do in the future.  Old habits die hard.  I am starting to use my Gmail account more and more so that step may come sooner rather than later.

Do you use Gmail?  Do you have a special reason for using it?

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