Author Topic: G-mail (Read 11564 times)

enigma487 · « **on:** June 17, 2004, 10:49:03 AM »

Anyone out there have a g-mail account? [contemplating] they seem to be going a lot cheaper on e-bay than they had been. [/contemplating]

couchmonkey · « **Reply #1 on:** June 17, 2004, 11:03:47 AM »

No, but on the topic, Yahoo! upped it's e-mail accounts to 100MB yesterday. I'm glad to have all the extra space, but I find it insulting that I had to listen to my Yahoo mail whine about how I was using too much space for almost two years and now suddenly I'm not even using a tenth of the account...all because some new competition finally came to the market.
YAY for competition!

mouse_clicker · « **Reply #2 on:** June 17, 2004, 11:47:20 AM »

I have a Gmail account (thanks to "a friend")! It's quite awesome, I have to say, what with the automatically updating contacts list, the mail search powered by Google, and so much more.

MysticGohan24 · « **Reply #3 on:** June 17, 2004, 12:01:36 PM »

What's a Gmail? What's the differrence with your usual PC's email? other than not taking up space

ruby_onix · « **Reply #4 on:** June 17, 2004, 12:45:20 PM »

G-mail is Google's take on web-based e-mail, like Hotmail or Yahoo Mail.

Webmail can be checked from any computer, so it's great for people on-the-go, and it's also great if your household has more computer users than available e-mail accounts.

Here's Google's press release about it.

Google's entry into the market blows the crap out of almost every feature offered by any of their rivals (most of which have been constantly scaling back their services, for seveal years now, unless you join their deluxe "pay service", and G-mail looks to blow away even their "paid" versions too).

But, G-mail's still just in a "testing phase" right now, so only a very-limited number of people were allowed to sign up for it. So, it seems that some of those lucky people are willing to sell thier G-mail accounts on eBay.

Jale · « **Reply #5 on:** June 17, 2004, 12:58:17 PM »

It does indeed look good, but think how many servers and stuff they will need to offer that much to every user. Wow. Deep Thought, the city-sized supercomputer from the Hitchiker series springs to mind.

Berny · « **Reply #6 on:** June 17, 2004, 01:57:37 PM »

Yes, I too have G-Mail and it is amazing. I mean seriously, Yahoo is TRYING to compete, but they still only have 1/10 of G-Mail's storage capacity. I mean seriously. :/ AND it's run by google. Google=God. But yeah, tis excellent. If you ever receive an invitation from someone who already has an account (which aside from joing blogger.com is the only way to get invited) I highly recommend you accept and get rid of your hotmail or yahoo or whatever account. I mean hotmail is STILL at 2MB.

At least Yahoo tries to be great. G-MAIL IS TEH ROXORZ!

MysticGohan24 · « **Reply #7 on:** June 17, 2004, 02:08:13 PM »

lol, would seem so. But what do they get in return to finance such a project? not that I'm complaining or anything. But what do free email accounts get? Do they sell your email addresses like aol does

Or are they simply love pissing the competition off? lol

If it's great I'll join up with it.

Berny · « **Reply #8 on:** June 17, 2004, 02:12:34 PM »

Gmail has this thing where they have SPAM blockage, but they allow certain advertisers to, well, advertise. Like when you do any google search, you get ads on the right side of your results; it's kinda like that. I believe that's how they make their money. People love google and advertisers know that and are willing to pay so, well you know how that works. ^_^

Ian Sane · « **Reply #9 on:** June 17, 2004, 02:14:08 PM »

I have stuck with my crappy Hotmail account for years for one reason and one reason only: I really like my email address. It's easy for people to remember and it doesn't have any stupid numbers or anything like that. It's my real first and last name seperated by an underscore @hotmail.com. If I try to get that on any other site I always have to add my birthday or a 'BC' or 'CA' to it.

Plus it's such a huge pain to tell all your friends to change their address books for you. Half of them forget and you spend all your time checking two email accounts.

Grey Ninja · « **Reply #10 on:** June 17, 2004, 03:11:51 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: Jale
It does indeed look good, but think how many servers and stuff they will need to offer that much to every user. Wow. Deep Thought, the city-sized supercomputer from the Hitchiker series springs to mind.

Google doesn't like to talk about their hardware. But they have a huge staff of Computer Scientists, and a LOT of PhDs.

It's known that Google has a huge server farm running Linux though. Each PC has a pair of 120GB hard drives I believe, and Google has thrown out a few numbers now and then, saying that they have tens of thousands of computers. However, most believe this to be inaccurate, as they obviously have a LOT of computing power at their fingertips. It's thought that they probably have servers numbering in the HUNDREDS of thousands.

What's really most amazing about Google though is how well they manage their server farm. When it comes time to update their boxen, they ripple the updates through the machines in a way that makes any sysadmin cream his pants. It's just a marvel of the world that it all actually works I tell ya.

Molobert · « **Reply #11 on:** June 17, 2004, 06:44:03 PM »

GN is back? Hmm...maybe I'm not coming here enough

Is there any way to redirect email from one address to another (for free)? If so, I'll switch to Gmail when it comes out, otherwise I'll stick with Yahoo.

Shift Key · « **Reply #12 on:** June 17, 2004, 07:46:51 PM »

I use Yahoo, and just store my mail at home. I've got three accounts (uni and personal spam-free one and the spammy Yahoo one) all integrated into Thunderbird (which I'm contemplating upgrading to 0.7 or whatever the new release is, but delaying because of the pains of the 0.6 upgrade).

G-Mail looks nice, but I'm happy with 100MB and 10MB messages. They should definitely win over some Hotmail fans though. They make their money back by sending e-mails to you from companies, a sort of solicited spam. I wonder if it possible to block those emails at all...

molobert: Under Mail Options should be a link to "POP Access and Forwarding" or something similar. Click that, and type in the address you want to forward all messages from your Yahoo account. Easy

KDR_11k · « **Reply #13 on:** June 17, 2004, 11:48:41 PM »

Since I'm an EU citizen Gmail can go to hell for all I care. I'm not even sure whether they're allowed to offer it to EU citizens, since they're violatig the data protection and retention laws. Basically the EU doesn't allow companies to unrestrictedly forward information to advertisers (it's permitted under very strict rules, I think), noone but the receipent is permitted to read a mail (at least in Germany, where I live) and customer data must be deleted upon request (and after a certain time span, IIRC). Gmail violates all three.

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evil intentions · « **Reply #14 on:** June 18, 2004, 08:03:09 AM »

100 MB for me!! YAY!!! Thank you, Yahoo. It sure took quite a while though.

I had a hotmail account as my first email address, and it sucked. I had to make sure I deleted my emails after reading them so I wouldn't run out of space in my inbox.

Berny · « **Reply #15 on:** June 18, 2004, 10:28:22 AM »

Quote
Originally posted by: evil intentions

I had a hotmail account as my first email address, and it sucked. I had to make sure I deleted my emails after reading them so I wouldn't run out of space in my inbox.

*shudders* ugh...Oh yes. Hotmail is horrific. I'm still shocked they haven't upped their storage size. Do they even CARE any more?

evil intentions · « **Reply #16 on:** June 18, 2004, 07:57:57 PM »

My mom seems to think Hotmail is terrific. Scary that I'm related to her.

Jale · « **Reply #17 on:** June 19, 2004, 12:32:51 AM »

The only reason that I have hotmail is because then I can use msn messenger.

Plus I don't get that many emails to warrant a bigger acount.

Shift Key · « **Reply #18 on:** June 19, 2004, 12:50:45 AM »

Quote
The only reason that I have hotmail is because then I can use msn messenger.

Erm, you can use MSN without a Hotmail account, all you need to do is sign up for a Passport.

Jale · « **Reply #19 on:** June 19, 2004, 12:54:11 AM »

Still convenient.

Caillan · « **Reply #20 on:** June 19, 2004, 01:23:40 AM »

Yeah, Hotmail is really bad. After using something decent I was shocked at its cappyness. I was going to send some music to KnowsNothing, and I sent like 10megs of it... to his Hotmail account. That's the 7th stupidest thing I've ever done.

When I used Hotmail, it actually blocked most messages sent by my friends, and let through the crap spammers sent me. This isn't an exageration, about 80% of my friend's messages were blocked! No wI just use it for the messanger.

mouse_clicker · « **Reply #21 on:** June 19, 2004, 01:25:31 AM »

Quote
That's the 7th stupidest thing I've ever done.

I'd be very interested to know what the 4th stupidest thing you've ever done is.

Caillan · « **Reply #22 on:** June 19, 2004, 01:30:32 AM »

Yeah, well, it involved other people playing electric guitars, bass guitars and drumkits and me a triangle. I play the double bass now, which is the best instrument ever created

evil intentions · « **Reply #23 on:** June 19, 2004, 10:12:32 AM »

Quote
Originally posted by: Caillan

When I used Hotmail, it actually blocked most messages sent by my friends, and let through the crap spammers sent me. This isn't an exageration, about 80% of my friend's messages were blocked! No wI just use it for the messanger.

Yeah that used to happen to me when my friends got new email addresses. It sent all of the emails that I got that aren't in my address book into my junk mail which I never checked. It sucked.

Berny · « **Reply #24 on:** June 19, 2004, 02:05:21 PM »

Yeah, I kept my junkmail filter at "light" or whatever the most lenient filter setting was for just that reason. Unfortunately 90% of the email I received was spam but all my friends' mail got in. Lotsa deleting though. <3 Gmail. I don't know what the "Trash" file in gmail is for though. It's just kinda there. The mail in there doesn't delete. Meh, whatever. I'm not complaining.

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Author Topic: G-mail (Read 11564 times)