Thanks to Robert from bump.net I now have GMail account. So what's the BIG deal? Well, to start off you're given 1000MB of space! Google significantly upped the ante on storage space (in comparison Yahoo offers 100MB and Hotmail's limit is a paltry 2MB). In terms of what it takes to manage incoming email Google has whittled it down to just 3 main actions: 1) Archive, 2) Report as Spam or 3) Move to Trash.
Also, there are no folders instead you classify your email with a labels (if it's an important email you can mark it with a 'star' which is the same as flagging. So let's say I receive 3 emails, one is work related reminding me of a lunch appointment for Friday (the email contains the address and phone of a new restaurant), the second email is a pretty good joke from a friend and the final email is organ enlargement related.
The first email I'd label as Work and 'star' it, the second I'd label as Personal and archive and the last one I'd report as spam (which helps Google block future junk mails from that sender). The inbox would now just contain my lunch meeting reminder because the joke will have been archived and the spam deleted. Once my lunch meeting has passed I could also achive that email. Now what if two weeks later a friend wants to try out that restaurant. Well, that email has been archived and is now in 'All Mail'. So do I go in there and look 2 weeks back until I find the email. Of course not, this is Google - the search engine company so I run search for that email - I'd type in restaurant's name (since it was starred it'll be even easier to find).
GMail strives for a cleaner inbox and to reduce the time people spend organizing and retrieving their emails (email conversations are also organized by threads which isn't new since some email clients have had this feature for years but GMail is the first of the webmail services to offer it). Now I'm a multi-folder junkie, I must have at least 40 folders in my Outlook but I must admit when I'm going to look up an email from some-time-ago I generally right-click on the folder that I think the email is in and run a search. Sometimes I guess wrong or don't remember which project a certain piece of info is in and resort to running a complete inbox search anyway.
GMail will be a free service when it launches (which I anticipate will be pretty soon since they've been ramping up the # of invitations they've been sending). GMail doesn't include advertising footer messages in emails you send but it does show targeted google ads on the right-hand column. People have been complaining that it's an invasion of privacy since it scans your email messages to determine what ads to display. Well, email is not private period (unless you're using PGP). So I wouldn't use any webmail service to send extremely personal/private information. One java developer noted that he switched all his tech mailing lists to his gmail account and doesn't mind seeing ads for the eclipse IDE or other java related products/services.
One concern is whether Google will allow POP email clients to connect to GMail, I'd say probably not since that would get around the targeted ads (perhaps as a paid feature?). I like what I've seen of GMail so far and have high expectations for the service. If they can keep the spam count low (what drove me from my Yahoo account) it'll definitely be my new webmail serivce of choice. Now if only Google released an instant messaging service ;)
UPDATE Firefox .9 has been released. Upgrading from .8?
Be advised some of your extensions may not yet work with .9
I've been using the Mozilla Firebird (formerly Phoenix) browser almost exclusively since it's release. First of all, the most significant feature you'd notice over Internet Explorer is tabbed browsing which allows you to open multiple windows in one main browser window.
I rarely have less than 5 browser windows open, so tabbed browsing really cleans up my task bar since Firebird just shows up once. It allows me to keep related tabs in different browser windows. So I can keep my work tabs in one, news/stock updates in a separate one and of course goofing off windows in yet another. You can also bookmark these windows into one folder and then open all the tabs in that folder. This is very helpful for when you've been doing research b/c with just one click you can launch a handful of pages. Now, Firebird isn't the first browser to have this feature, Netcaptor (which claims to have invented the concept) and Opera both have tabbed browsing. But those browsers will set you back $30 and $40, respectively, while Firebird is FREE (let's face it, paying for browsers is so 1996). UPDATE 1: I found out that Avant is a free ie-based tabbed browser. Haven't tried it out though. UPDATE 2: There's also MyIE2. It looks pretty neat but haven't tried it either.
Who knows if Microsoft will inclued tabbed browsing in the next version of ie. Tabbed browsing does add a new level of complexity that the average computer user might not be able to wrap their head around. Heck, the majority of people don't even open more than ONE window (it bugs me to no end when I see people clicking back and forth b/w a listing and detail page instead of just opening a new window for each item they want to compare). And while Apple may not want to confuse their users with the complexities of a two-button mouse they do believe they can grasp tabbed browsing.
As for Plugins, like Flash, Shockwave and Java, the installation isn't as automated as it is for ie however the install process really isn't much more difficult. It's just a matter of pointing to the plugins directory when you're running the Plugin's setup. Another neat feature are Extensions these are 3rd party add-ons that introduce new/improved functionality to the Firebird browser. For example, I installed SmoothWheel and PNH Developer Toolbar.
Now Mozilla/Firebird diehards will be wondering why I spent so much time on tabs and didn't bother to mention the fast HTML rendering engine, better CSS compatibilty or XUL skinning. Mainly b/c the average user doesn't care about this sort of stuff but I will say that I had tried Mozilla and it just didn't convince me that it was better alternative to the ubiquitous Internet Explorer. This is not the case with Firebird which at .6 release is already a very stable and impressive browser and has become my default browser.
PROS
CONS