How Gmail has set me free

In the past I have not been one for using web mail systems, although over the years I have had many web mail setups most went out of use when they started charging me to have POP access. I like my e-mail on a client on my computer, it feels real and I know when e-mail arrives with out having to login to a web page.

Apple’s web mail set up is nice but I don’t really receive much e-mail through that account, mainly as I have been trying to keep it free from spam. I have web mail with my web hosting package but it is too slow and clunky for my liking.

Google’s Gmail has a fairly simple interface, as is Google’s style and the power of the system is in its searching and filtering capabilities.

It is the filtering and especially the spam filter that I have found so useful on Gmail.

My main e-mail account which is with my web hosting package gets flooded with spam every day, the spam filter at the host only ever seems to mark the occasional legitimate list posting with [spam?] in the subject line, the tide continues to rise.

I use Apple’s Mail for my mail client and I was at first impressed with the filtering of spam. However in the last few months it seemed to have given up, it would often mark messages correctly but most of the time it couldn’t be bothered moving the items to the Junk mail folder as the preferences were set to do. I tried retraining it several times but in the end I just gave up.

Several people had told me about Gmail’s anti-spam filtering but as someone who already has more e-mail accounts than brain cells I really didn’t want another. Of course my inner Geek got the better of me and when I got an invite to Gmail I set up an account.

I decided to test the anti-spam measures by sending all the e-mail from my main account to my Gmail account while initially retaining a copy on my host’s server just in case.
I was impressed that it caught almost all the spam and it did actually learn when I told it the spam it had missed and the legitimate e-mail that it had called spam.

Now all I really needed to do at this point Mail at Gmail and use a POP connection, however I am awkward and read my e-mail on my PowerBook for work and also download it to my Mac at home. In the past I have set the PowerBook not to delete the mail from the server and the Mac at home to delete it when it is checked. This seems fine but things go wrong and I have ended up with duplicate messages flying about in the past.

The solution is to use an IMAP account on Mail but as far as I can see you can’t make an IMAP connection to Gmail, my web host however does support IMAP so it was logical to retrieve my e-mail from there so this is the set up I now have for my e-mail.

Message arrives at web host and is forwarded to Gmail
Spam is filtered out
Important e-mails trigger filters they are labeled and archived
A copy is sent to an address at the web host.
e-mail that doesn’t trigger a filter stays at Gmail.
I read the delivery address with Mail using IMAP.

The e-mail that I get on the computer is now only what I need and want to see. There is no spam, no advertising from a company that I last bought stuff from 3 years ago. If I want to read these than I can just pop to Gmail and read them there. They are not ‘in my face’.

If you are going to use Gmail with a Mac the GmailStatus is a very useful menubar addition thingy.

I don’t know if Gmail is still by invite? Anyway I have a bunch of invites so just comment if you would like and invite sent to you.

Kev

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