Switch to Gmail

The ability to access all of your emails and contacts with a web browser is a powerful concept, especially if you use multiple computers throughout the day. Moreover, having someone else responsible for backing up your most important data removes a huge headache. I've been a paying Yahoo! Mail Plus customer for the past few years. Last week, I switched to a better alternative, Gmail.

Gmail is now the gold standard in web-based email solutions. Here's what distinguishes it from its competitors:

• Fast and snappy interface. Google has invested a lot in AJAX, and it shows in Gmail. At times, Gmail feels like a desktop application. Yahoo's new interface is still clunky, slow, and flaky.


• Keyboard shortcuts. Vim is my primary development environment, so it's no surprise that I'm a heavy user of keyboard shortcuts.


• Threaded conversations. How did I previously live without this?


• Tags. I can categorize conversations into multiple buckets. For example, a converstaion may be related to ClientX as well as AJAX. Now I don't have to choose just a single place.


• 2.7 GB of storage and growing. Wow.

The big feature I'm waiting for is Google Calendar. Hopefully, it will adhere to the iCalendar standard, have the rich client interface of Gmail, and of course, be integrated with Gmail.