by Jessica Bosari

Created on: March 17, 2009

Making the switch to Gmail from Outlook

I have been an Outlook addict for years. It is one of the few bastions of my beginner internet days. Having always used it at the office, I was slow to make the switch to another email program now that I work from home.

Give Outlook its Due

Do not get me wrong. As much as I hate the evil empire, Microsoft, you have to admit Outlook is a sweet program. It integrates everything you would ever need to keep your work organized and flowing smoothly. Nevertheless, after ten years, I have finally grown weary of the constant hang-ups and crashes. In the old days, I put up with the quirks because EVERYTHING online was like that. Dial-up took forever, page loading was at a snail's pace and page crashes were just to be expected. That is why the Outlook problems seemed normal and instep with the internet experience.

Not Anymore!

These days, developers make it easy on us. User friendliness is no longer a luxury or pleasant surprise as it was about five years ago. If Firefox crashes, it just comes back up at the page you were visiting. Just a few seconds out of your time and you are up and running again. User friendliness is expected now and users are less likely to tolerate any program that does not work well the first time they try it.

Other Potential Replacements

I looked at other potential replacements like Mozilla's Thunderbird and Zimbra's desktop client, but was not crazy about either one. I tried switching everything over to Hotmail but found I could only integrate it with up to five email addresses. I went to my ISP, which uses Zimbra online, but the program did not play well with my favorite browser, Opera. So finally, I skulked over to Google and decided to "make do" with Gmail.

My Google Misconceptions

I have to say that I had some misconceptions about Gmail because of my experiences with Adsense. Anyone who uses this program understands how frustrating it can be. Ad providers like Kontera allow you to just click once and see exactly what web addresses your ad clicks came from. Adsense forces you to set up reports or play with Google Analytics. Absolute pain in the rear quarters. But I digress.

Setting Up Gmail

Gmail amazed me when I actually put it to the test. At first, I tried to use my old Outlook habits in setting up the email accounts, but was unable to change outgoing ports, a necessity for some of my email addresses (I run three websites, so there are a few of them). The solution was to set up the email accounts as alternate

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