I have had a couple questions lately on how I handle all of my emails, so here goes:

Like many out there I have used Outlook for the longest time, longer than I can remember actually. I had a huge PST file with emails dating back to college. When I got a PDA for work purposes, all of a sudden having my email in one place on my desktop did not work unless I wanted to setup an Exchange server. It has always upset me that Outlook does not support IMAP completely, and they have made it difficult to use; so this wasn’t an alternative. I had fears about giving up control of my mail server, which I have always chosen to run myself. Lastly, how was I going to sync up my calendar? After testing many setups, this is how I dropped Outlook like a bad habit.

Let Go of Mail Server Control:

I always ran my own mail server because I didn’t have to worry about spam signatures being attached to my emails, running out of storage space, or any of that other crap. GMail came along and changed the game with Google Apps, and Yahoo has been ramping up it’s offerings as well. I needed my email in a central place where any of my devices could hit it. An Exchange server was too pricey and with it came support problems, and any other software was just going to be something else I would have to set time aside to get up and running and keep running. I finally let go control of running my own mail server, and haven’t looked back since. Gmail is fast, works with my domain, has plenty of storage, improves it’s services without me having to upgrade anything, requires no time investment from me, has a mobile portal, and just keeps getting better.

Got Used To Using WebMail:

It was hard to get used to using a webmail client as my only email client. Especially with GMail which uses tags instead of folders. Breaking out of the mentality that my email is here, I can physically handle it, and it’s mine proved difficult and I almost reverted at several points.

Mail Notification:

With a webmail client, unless you want to keep it open all the time, you need to know when you have new mail so you can stay on top of it. I found a little gem by a company called MassGrid called GAlert. I paid a hefty $20 for this little shareware application, which sits in the system tray and lets you know when you have new mail for more than one GMail account. This was actually a hard application to find, yes there are a lot of GMail notification tools out there but not that many work with Google Apps and even less that work well.

On The Road:

As mentioned before, GMail has a slick mobile interface which is easy to use; just point toward your regular login and Google knows you are coming from a mobile device. Calendar was the next problem. Right now there are limited API’s available for GMail and Google Calendar, so it was also a task trying to find a way to synchronize my mobile calendar with Google Calendar. GooSync does just that. A little application downloads to your Mobile device, and lets you sync with the mobile calendar. They have both a free and paid service. Perfect!

Conclusion:

I haven’t been happier. In the process I dropped having to invest time in running a mail server and manage my mail and calendar, made myself more mobile and able to grab my data anywhere, and dropped ActiveSync which is a blessing of it’s own.

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