I’ve been thinking about doing it for a long time. Finally I’m making the plunge. I’m switching from Outlook to gmail as my main email client. The main thing that has held me back from doing this so far is that up until recently sending messages from other email accounts through gmail would still attach your gmail address with the message. This has now changed so that you can send out from other accounts and people don’t know that it’s coming from gmail.

Why did I make the switch? There are a number of reasons. I like the gmail interface. Multiple messages on the same thread are grouped together which is really handy since I collaborate over email frequently with other people. Also, my outlook data file was getting to be really big which made Outlook run slower. With Gmail, my mail is backed up by google rather than by me and is therefore less likely to get lost if my computer were to blow up or something. I also like the convenience of being able to check my email from any computer and have everything available to me as it would be on my own machine.

But the final thing that pushed me to make the switch is because using gmail’s IMAP feature my email is in sync on my iPhone. It used to be very annoying to have to manage email in two places for multiple pop accounts. Now gmail manages all of my email accounts and when I check my email on my iPhone, messages that I’ve read already don’t show up as new messages like they used to.

I know there will be some downsides to using a web interface to check my mail. One thing is sending invoices directly out of quickbooks won’t be a one click affair any more. Handling attachments like documents and photos doesn’t work quite as nicely on a web client as it does a desktop one like Outlook. Also, keeping contacts in sync doesn’t seem to be possible yet either. But I’m counting on some of these downsides to go away as gmail improves (it seems to be getting better all the time).

All in all things have gotten to the point now where it makes sense, so I’m making the plunge.