Some feedback on Gmail

I've been trying Gmail (thank you Jeff Nemcher for hooking me up with an account) for the past week or so. Here's some observations:

1. I love the way Gmail manages threads. Click on a item in one of your folders, and you see not only the message, but it pulls out all the other messages in that "thread" (replies, forwards, etc) and makes it very easy to navigate up and down the chain. Way cool.


2. POP support. Ok, so I can access my Gmail from my favorite email client (Outlook, Eudora, whatever). Very nice feature, and the primary reason I have not adopted Yahoo! or Hotmail's email services as my primary email provider.


3. POP support. Ok, now flip that around... I cannot access my POP accounts from Gmail. Yahoo! and Hotmail give you that freedom. In the long run, if Gmail lives beyond beta, this is probably not a big deal, as most people will use Gmail as their primary email service. But right now as I'm trying this out, this is a key feature I need to have.


4. Ads. Yep, you're going to get ads, but in true Google fashion Google keeps them relevant and out of the way. Not as bad as I thought they would be.


5. Signatures. I haven't figured out how to do HTML in the signature yet. =(

In the end, I think I will end up using this as my main email. Google is not likely to disappear, and maybe I save a few bucks a month by not having my own domain name. The threading feature alone is worth keeping Gmail.