And it goes like this:
Everyone I know signs up for a Gmail account.
That’s it. The end. Web-based, so you can get to it anywhere. Plenty of storage, so you never have to worry about whether some IT heavy is going to show up and tell you to empty your inbox. The way in which e-mails and replies are stored as conversations is an excellent way to traverse stored messages. Has integrated (Jabber) chat. There’s a cool calendar that plays nice with iCal files. AJAX! Contact groups. And more….
I’ve tried repeatedly to get Leah to use her Gmail account (I even went as far as setting one up for her), but she just doesn’t seem to be able to make the leap from her work Outlook account. Pity, really. What happens when she gets a new job? Does she really want all her personal e-mails going through our office’s Exchange server?
I’ve had a Yahoo! account, a Hotmail account, and a .Mac account, and none of them come close to working as well as Gmail does. It don’t cost nuthin’.