24 March, 2007

GoogleMail (GMAIL) - Configuring POP (email software) Access

                I love Gmail.  I used to use my ISP’s email as my primary email, my Yahoo! email as, what I lovingly referred to as, “my crap bucket” – the account I would use when I filled-in online surveys, purchased items from online stores, or joined discussion groups – and all was well.  Then I realized that, while at coffee shops or relatives’ houses that did not exist on my ISP’s service, I could not send email from Outlook.  So, I switched to Gmail, and I’ve never looked back.

 

                The following link has instructions for configuring your email software to download and upload email.  If you don’t want to do it, that’s obviously fine.  I just wanted to give you the information just in case you’re interested.

 

                GoogleMail help regarding “POP” access:  http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=1555

 

                While I love new things, I am a bit “old school” when it comes to managing my email.  I like having a local copy of my inbox and sent box.  Thus, should I ever find myself in a temporarily offline situation – and as a notebook users I often do – I can continue to compose messages that later get uploaded when I have a network connection.  Also, I then have copies of the email I can occasionally burn to CD or DVD, for archiving.  If you don’t care about such concerns, you might not want to go through the trouble of configuring your Gmail for POP use.