So is GoogleMail any good?

Basically I still use Outlook Express which stinks simply because I was too busy to change. Every year I archive all my old emails and I thought this year I might finally change to Thunderbird, but a friend of mine said that it's being kinda phased out as now everything is moving online. In principle online stuff sounds OK but I hate slow web pages, even if I only have to wait 1 second after a click...However, I don't have any email on my Macbook Pro yet so if I had a web interface, this would indeed make it a lot easier to check and send email on the PC and Macbook.

Naturally I need to do lots of emails when writing a game with a team and I'd like to move more of the game development to the Macbook so that I can get away from my desk more often. Any feedback welcome please.

I use Thunderbird and IMAP. I get the best of both worlds - an easy to use interface for 'general' use, plus I can access my email from anywhere using a web interface (Horde).

Also because its IMAP, I can access the same emails from any PC because its all stored online.

If there's e-mails I want to keep I can put them in an offline local folder. Saves me storing hundreds of them online which is basically a waste of space.

The only time I notice any delay, is when I want to save a file attachment. Difference between POP3 and IMAP is that with POP3, the file is already downloaded. With IMAP, its only downloaded when you want it to be. Otherwise only the email headers are downloaded.

Your friend smells of wee.

I use Thunderbird as my central email... er.. thingie, and get any webmails either checked via POP3 or forwarded to another one that is.

It's all good, I promise. Thumbs up for GoogleMail (if you're into that sorta thing).

I have a Googlemail account and it works okay.

You can setup Googlemail to recieve mails from your other accounts.

Yeah Thunderbird and Gmail here. Thunderbird has built-in support for Gmail. I also use the online google calendar and a Gmail calendar plugin so I can access my calendar online or through Thunderbird, too.

Mail and Thunderbird whilst beeing honest Thunderbird can also be a pain. It's free and for private usage okay but not really good.

Someone reccomend a decent thunderbird-like email client that actually allows you to MINIMISE it to the system tray? IE no task bar clutter!?

I love Thunderbird, but I dislike having it on my taskbar just to know when I recieve an email.

Gmail has one advantage over most on line Email providers, no annoying adds, Yet.

Cygnus: You'll want to check out

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Minimize_to_system_tray_(Thunderbird)

then.

[edit] Bah - non-working-properly linkage thingy.

Excelent, Thanks!

OK thanks for the info all. Sounds like I should maybe try out Thunderbird anyway with IMAP. It's just a hassle to set this up so I want to choose the right thing first itme.

I've been using Gmail for a long time. No issues with it.

There ought to be a nice and easy "backup all my mail to a file" option, but there isn't. You can re-download all your mail at any time through a client tough, so no big problem.

Can I use Gmail as my email client but with my own email account? I would love to check my email through a webmail interface with good search and spam filtering, but I don't want to change my email address.

ADDITION: I should really know better than to ask questions before looking it up myself -
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=switchguide.html&stage=keep&provider=any

I use Thunderbird and your friend is a toolbox for saying it's being 'phased out.' He clearly has no idea what he's talking about if he's buying into the idea that online tools will replace local mail clients.

I use Thunderbird and mail.app with IMAP from my website, but I have it go through gmail first as a spam filter. Almost 0 spam vs. the 100's a day before.

Gmail is awesome!

Is IMAP something your e-mail provider has to provide, or is it something you do yourself?

Wouldn't mind setting one up if it's something the user has to do themself, keep my mail synced up regardless of system I use...

Genexi: It's something your host has to provide.