It just confused me, and spam filters were non-existent back then. So, I've never gone back; I actually like having inboxes for different purposes.

But, it's a cool feature, and you definitely have the right use case for it.

When you send a message to myname@mycompany.ie it arrives in the mycompany inbox. Gmail then checks that inbox and pulls all the messages therein into my Gmail inbox. In fact, messages sent to my Gmail address or to three other standard POP3 e-mail addresses I own, all end up in my Gmail inbox.

And I can also use Gmail to send from those addresses. I can even set up one of them as my default sending address, if I wish.

Very sweet.

Gmail > Settings > Accounts > Get mail from other accounts

TRiG.

I like the web version too because it's also a showcase for how to do AJAX really well, without losing speed or overdoing it.

As for texting, the iPhone plan has a bunch of texts in it, and I've no idea how many I use, but I don't think I go over the allotment. Anyway, SMS is another nice-to-have that I'll probably use a few times; it does beat touch-typing on the iPhone though.

I'm not a huge consumer of the other stuff GMail offers, but I like that I could use if I wanted, e.g. if I'm on a computer that's not my own checking email, I have IM and Twitter without any additional cookies.

We do use OCS and Beehive. I read mail with TBird, and use Google Desktop for search; TBird's search has improved, but it's still too slow for me.

I like the chat and the e-mail labels and the filters, but I'm not a big user of their other features. And I don't know anyone in the USA who I'd want to be texting anyway, so this new release is little use to me. And besides, o2.ie allows me to send 250 free texts every month. And I can set up groups there, to text multiple people at once. Vodaphone Ireland allows 300 free texts a month from their website, but only to Irish numbers. I prefer O2.

TRiG

Email still remains at the center of my professional and personal life. Having that as a platform makes six billion times more sense to me compared to s'thing like f8.

I think we should give credit to where it is due. Buchheit completely turned around our expectations about email. I remember jotting things down as the search in Outlook sucked so bad. Now, after having uploaded all my big pst files, it just takes me max a minute to find what I want.

Admittedly, I am not a big user of other featuers of a PIM, except calendar and that too because I am forced to. But there, Outlook/Exchange seems to score.

Jake – just curious, u use OCS among u guys ? I sorta liked some of its features when in Orcl but traction in market has not still been achieved it seems.

IGoogle is a nice way to do that too, but I prefer GMail b/c mail is the center of that universe for me.

I like everything better than Outlook, even snail mail.

When I'm in GMail and click on calendar, why does it spawn a new tab/window? At least clicking on contacts or tasks works as I would expect. I want the calendar to open up within GMail just like it does with contacts or tasks. Doesn't this make sense? Oh, and add notepad functionality that works the same way as well. What do you think about this?

Maybe it's indicative of a culture problem within Google. They're more excited about the mail aspect of GMail and less interested it being a good PIM. Why do you like GMail as a PIM? Why do you like it better than Outlook?

I know some people want the uber-PIM app. I think I'd like to see how they use it and better understand the use cases. I'd also like to see if they could do the same thing in iGoogle and compare their experiences between the two platforms.

Or am I being anal-retentive here?

But there are people out there who want this type of uber-web app, or at least, someone thinks so. I guess this is why we keep seeing convergence of functionality.

Don't tell me you prefer Outlook for PIM.

Wince.