Today’s world is all about mobility and convenience, then why are so many people still using local email clients like Outlook and Outlook Express that tie them down, and cause slowing of their computers by storing all of their mail locally?

It’s a new world out there and Google has definitely led the email mobility revolution with Gmail. Though other companies have laid the groundwork for internet based email, well known companies such as MSN (Hotmail), Yahoo! (Yahoo Mail), it’s Google’s Gmail that has finally come up with an interface that has surpassed the functionality of Microsoft’s popular Outlook email client programs.

Gmail not only answers the call with a seamless integration with the Google Calendar, but also offers many functions that would make even the most loyal Outlook user take notice…features such as customizable signatures, auto responders, and so on, but besides what you would expect there are many features that are not only improved, but perfected.

Labeling Folder Archive Feature; Functions such as email labels (or folders) are integrated so that you can archive your email and easily find it for later.

Gmail Contacts; A contacts system very similar to Outlook’s but with many upgraded features such as Google Chat, their instant messaging feature, and groups.

Receive all of your email in Gmail; Setup all of your emails accounts in Gmail with their POP3 outside account mail checking feature and sending feature which allows you setup a default account and attach a signature.

Block Spam More Effectively; Gmail also has the highest rated spam blocking features available, where Outlook’s spam features are terrible in comparison.

Gmail Email Filters; Setup filters to tell Gmail how to handle your incoming mail, similar to Outlook but with more scenarios.

Gmail’s Mail Search; Search and find your mail using Google’s patented searching technologies allowing you to find your email much more effectively than other programs.

Google Buzz; Google Buzz is Google’s new social marketing platform that is integrated with Gmail, and it’s a cross between Twitter and FaceBook with different cool features than both.

Back Up & Downloading; Besides all of these great reasons to use Gmail instead of Outlook for your email client program is that when you use Gmail, unless you ask it to download an attached file, your email isn’t downloaded to your computer, it is checked remotely on Google’s  server which means your computer runs faster, and if your computer crashes you won’t loose your valuable email, and archived email files.

SMTP; Another great reason to use Gmail as your email client program is SMTP. When you use Gmail you use their server to send your mail. One of the biggest customer service issues that we have is when our server clients try to use Outlook and they can’t figure out how to get their send mail to work properly. What a lot of people don’t realize is when using a local based email program such as Outlook or Outlook Express, they are supposed to use obtain their ISP (Internet Service Provider) outgoing mail server address. To help with this frustration, we are including a chart below that help you identify you local ISP outgoing SMTP mail server hosts address:

I’m Ready to Try Gmail; For more information about how get your free Gmail account, and how to setup your IPD hosted email accounts in Gmail read this article:
http://www.imageprodesign.com/blog/?p=400

~CM