Life Without Gmail?

About a month ago I did something only the few and brave do; I stopped using Gmail.

Number of times I’ve been tempted to switch back since then: 0.

Honestly speaking I thought I was going to go into GWS (Gmail Withdrawal Syndrome). I thought that going back to using e-mail with a client (Mozilla Thunderbird in my case) was going to be a difficult agonizing why-did-I-do-this type of situation.

No such feelings surfaced whatsoever.

In fact it was rather painless.

So I had to really think about this. Okay, why did I start using Gmail in the first place..?

Here’s what I came up with.

I first acquired a Gmail account in 2004. This is back when Gmail had “only” 1GB of space and the only way you could get an account was by invitation only (i.e. another Gmail user had to invite you and I was fortunate enough to know someone).

It was the space thing that sold me on it. “1GB? How could anyone keep more than 1GB of e-mail!? Cool!”

Or at least cool back then.

As a comparison from then to now, I believe the space provided to you in Gmail is currently 6GB. Maybe 7? I don’t know. It’s frickin’ big and we’ll leave it at that.

Does anyone really need this much e-mail space? If your answer to that is yes, you really should stop sending porn videos to your friends. Seriously. Watch how you’ll magically get back space by cleaning out your Sent folder.

Even when I first started using Gmail the one thing that stuck out like a sore thumb is “WHERE’Z MY FRICKIN’ FOLDERS?!” And of course in Gmail there are none to be found. You’ve got labels. Yeah, you could consider “All Mail” a folder I suppose.. but we all know it’s not. Regardless, I was never hot on the idea of using labels; I used them only because I was forced to doing mail the “Gmail way”.

There was also a host of other stuff I was missing out on using Gmail.

Sort by size? Nope.

View size AT ALL? Nope.

View importance level? Nope.

Apply colors? Nope.

And don’t give me that “Just use Greasemonkey!” crap. Please. E-Mail should do all it needs to do without the need for memory-sucking Firefox add-ons.

IMAP sucks in Gmail because the server time-outs are a constant annoyance.

POP in Gmail sucks because.. well.. POP sucks. Reliable, yes, but what’s the point of Gmail if you’re using POP?

In the end I don’t have any GWS whatsoever. I thought I would, but I don’t.

Most people use Gmail by using the standard web interface. This interface sucks of biblical proportions, because when compared to a true e-mail client it fails miserably.

I don’t miss you, Gmail.

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Staren
finally, someone else willing to come out and say GMail isn’t a god send and the be all end all solution. yes it’s cool, yes it’s new, but when you’re dealing with 5+ e-mail accounts for different projects / aspects of your life and message rules are what keep you sane, GMail is not the best solution. Good article.
http://pcrestoration.blogspot.com/ Robert Plumer
I only started using Gmail less than a year ago and I’m still not thrilled with it. I only like because because it ties into other features I like (example: Blogger,Google Reader, Adsense etc..). I still use Yahoo mail as it’s more intuitive(at least it is too me) and I’ve had it close to forever. I never understood the “labels” thing.
Justin Hitchborn (hitchface)
The labels are just folders, only the emails that are labeled will still appear in your inbox if it is easier to find it that way.
Honestly, to each their own. I hate Yahoo with a passion, because I don’t find it intuitive. It’s all preference.
Randal Ketchem
1) With Gmail I can access ALL of my email from anywhere there exists a browser, and I get a common interface.
2) Labels ROCK! They are not folders. With folders, each email goes to a single folder. In Gmail you can give multiple labels to a single email, click Archive, and the email is searchable by any of the labels or multiple labels. For example, “House Remodel” and “Kitchen”. Search for “label:House Remodel” and get kitchen, bathroom, hot tub, everything. Search for “label:Kitchen” and get everything to do with the kitchen, even not the remodel. Search for both together and you see the power.
bjb_nyj101
If it’s Gmail Withdrawal Syndrome, then why do you keep calling it GWD ?
http://www.frostedside.com/blog/ Rich Menga
@bjb_nyj10: Good spot, fixed.
Paul
What I don’t like is if you forward a mail, then you have two of them, why does it double everything? Anyone know how to prevent this?
http://goarticlesuk.com Robin
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Nice site!
Robin
Warren
Actually you article reflects what every teenager goes through, need for change and to complain about things as issues when it is not there.
I too started using Gmail back in 2004 (last quarter) and I work with a number of folks from around the world and Gmail, Google Apps has been really great for us.
Gmail Labels are good enough for searching emails and yes you cannot sort it by size, but why do you need to? There is so much space you do not need to delete anything.
Just because you send porn to your friends and filled up your space does not mean that everyone does. To date I might have sent maybe 10 emails which are bigger than 5Mb, that too of scanned documents.
In every aspect of life, may it be software or day to day life decision, one needs moderation. There are features one might need or want but the rest of the 10 million users might not even use it, so it will not make a business sense to add that feature.
All I have to say to people who whine so much over nothing is “Grow Up”

Captain DDL
“All I have to say to people who whine so much over nothing is “Grow Up””
Nothing? He had emails disappearing from his account, which he intentionally saved. Maybe you need to grow up, so you can learn how to read. =)

burak
gmail filters spam correctly SPAM is the best point gmail has the best and cleverest filter ever.
starmonkey
Gmail’s fine for my use.
Labels are better than folders, because I can tag a single email with 2 labels. Yay.
Sometimes I wish labels could be hierarchical though.
SPAM Filtering is fantastic in gmail. I can’t use other mail systems cause I get viagra ads all day.
Grouping related emails as “conversations” is awesome.
Each to their own, but gmail meets my emailing needs just fine.
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Frank
I use gmail and like it but one thing that bothers me is that there is no ‘priority’ on messages. If someone send you an email marked as high priority, you would never know.
Alisonnic
>POP in Gmail sucks because.. well.. POP sucks. Reliable, yes, but what’s the point of Gmail if you’re using POP?POP in Gmail sucks because.. well.. POP sucks. Reliable, yes, but what’s the point of Gmail if you’re using POP?
POP3 sucks? Compared to web mail? Gawd. What are you smoking, buddy?
Anyway, the best thing about Gmail is that it gives you free POP3 access. If you don’t want to use POP3, then use Yahoo, which has an infinitely superior Webmail UI.
Also, Gmail does seem to have really good spam filtering. Since I mostly use POP3 to get my email, I didn’t even realized how much spam was being filtered out until I logged into the web interface one day for some reason. I thought the spammers just hadn’t found my Gmail addy until I saw the pile of junk mail in the Spam folder on gmail.com. Great filtering!
laribus
If not GMail then what?
sopclod
I use gmail in conjunction with gspace for 6.5 gigs of free online storage
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2k
great article, but what’s missing is you never recommend another email service. Any suggestions?
Alisonnic
Since I wrote my post last March, I switched from using POP3 with Gmail to IMAP, also on Gmail, using Thunderbird as my email client. Haven’t had any of the server timeouts you mention (knock on wood!)
Gmail’s labels feature translates to folders in Thunderbird, so I get the best of both worlds. And, unlike with POP3, I can get my email, read it, and file or delete it from many different computers. All I have to do is zip up my Thunderbird profile and copy it to a new computer, then pint Tbird to that profile to enable that computer for IMAP/Gmail.
I’ve also set up filters on Gmail’s site to sift assorted mailing list emails into appropriate folders/labels. The labels feature allows me to send a filtered email to both the Inbox and the appropriate folder, so I can scan it in Thunderbird’s Inbox and then delete it from the Inbox with a single click, while leaving it stashed in the folder in case I need it later.
So far I’m delighted with this combination.
tessa
I just found your blog on the google search engine and saw a few of your other posts that you had done . I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the great work. i will Look forward to reading more from you again.
Sophie
informative piece there, Thanks for this.its wonderfull to see someone with a like mind.