by Frederick Suleiman

Created on: March 14, 2008   Last Updated: March 04, 2011

A brief introduction: To be honest, Gmail was not my first internet email provider. I used to use Hotmail, back before the whole Microsoft "Live" scene shot up. Of course, this was back in 2004, back before Gmail really "existed" (it was in private beta). I had heard rumors about Gmail, and then, one day while doing a Google search, a link magically appeared below the text field, inviting me to sign up Gmail. I don't know if you still remember, but the online community was so excited with Gmail that people were making profits off Gmail account invitations left and right! Today, Gmail invitations are (unfortunately) worthless since Gmail is freely available to the public.

So why choose Gmail? (Some of the other providers offer common features, so this is unbiased.)

• Gmail has a clean, uncluttered interface, with Folder navigation on the left (inbox, outbox, etc)

• Gmail offers 6 GB of space, and growing (Yahoo! offers Unlimited storage).

• Free POP and IMAP

• Supports Filters, Forwarding, and Control over multiple Email Addresses

• No banner/flash ads. Only relevant text ads (which take up a TINY amount of space, only shown when reading messages)

• Gmail has an internal IM interface which supports Google Talk and AIM (again, does not take up much space because it's in the sidebar, under folder navigation)

Upon creating a Gmail account, you'll recieve access to other Google services, such as Google Documents (an online office suite that can store your local office documents), Picasa Web Albums, and Blogger. An entire list of services is available here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/.

The great thing about having all of these services is that you can extend your desktop to the online world. Essentially, you can use Gmail and the other Google services as "backup directories". Here are a few tools that will let you do just that:

DocSyncer + Google Documents - DocSyncer automatically copies all of your office documents (supports the new Office 2007 formats) to your Google Documents account, allowing you to edit and store your documents online. This is also useful for backing your documents up, as Google will let you download all of your documents in a ZIP file, and can convert your documents to other formats before download. 

Picasa Web Albums - Picasa Web Albums is exactly what it sounds like. You can use Google Picasa (the PC/Mac/Linux application) to edit, organize, email, blog post, and

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