Living in the cloud. (AKA: Moving from a local mail client to Gmail.)

After many years I’ve decided to move my primary email inbox from Apple’s mail.app to an online service (aka: the cloud). Among power users, I don’t think there is any other option other than Gmail. I’ve been passively using Gmail for many years so it wasn’t such a big leap.

But Why?

For quite a while I have been routing all my email through Gmail’s awkwardly named “Google Apps for Your Domain” (GAfYD) but in the end it was all accessed through mail.app. I did this due to my grandfathering in of the ways I used email in the past like when POP3 from a dial-up ISP was common. I was just used to having a local client.

I prefer to have my “command center” iMac in my home office, so I don’t use a notebook computer. On the rare occasion that I needed to, I could still access my email away from home through a web interface. At first, I used Squirrel Mail but later moved to GAfYD. Did I mention that I needed to do this with multiple email addresses, some forwarding to other accounts and some POP3 or IMAP? Over time, the mashing of old systems and new systems got ugly and awkward. I needed to revamp my email process.

You did what?

The solution I came up with was simple and obvious, Gmail. Scrap the desktop application all together and avoid syncing issues. The extra features in Gmail like the labs features, filters, labels, etc. add even more functionality.

I avoided using a web interface in the past mostly because I didn’t want to log into multiple accounts to see if I had mail and partly because, previously, most webmail interfaces sucked. Gmail has solved this problem with an intuitive interface and by letting you link multiple email accounts to one Gmail account via their “Check mail using POP3” feature. Gmail also lets you send email using each of those linked email addresses. You don’t even need to let people know that you are sending email from a Gmail account since you can select which one of your accounts will be the from address. Gmail becomes the mail client.

The tweaks.

Since I’ve been using a desktop client for many years there were a few things I was used to.

The first thing was being able to click on an email link and have it open my default mail application. Another thing that I like is Growl notifications. I like to know when a new email has arrived, who it’s from and what the subject is.

Using Google’s Notifier app I am able to accomplish all of this.

Final Thoughts.

This system took a while to setup but now I’ve got everything working smoothly. I would like to see Gmail support IMAP importing since it would make my linked acounts a little more instant. With that said, the above solution is the simplest solution that I have used in years. Embrace the cloud!

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