I’m wondering about a total swap to Google
Sitting here on a Friday evening working away and going through my inbox, whilst everyone else is out playing, does get to you.
What’s really quite annoying me at the moment is that my inbox — running via Microsoft Entourage on my MacBook Pro — is filled to the brim. 1,117 items, at the moment. Almost each of the items has at least 5 minutes+ work associated with it.
Going through mail in Entourage is a total bitch though.
It doesn’t matter how powerful your device — in this case 2GB of RAM and an ultra fast dual core just doesn’t seem to cut it. It takes seconds for emails to display and to open up.
Ok, maybe it takes a second. Two seconds max. But, still, I’m bordering on having had enough.
I teach a class of 11-12 year olds every Thursday evening at the moment — web design, web 2.0, google training, that sort of thing — and I’ve got each of them setup on Google Mail. Prior to that they were all languishing in HotmailHell or, heaven forbid, didn’t actually have an email address of their own.
When I saw them navigating through their email really fast, with just a browser… well, it really got to me. I do use my gmail account, but not that regularly. I used to. I used to exclusively use it for a while. I stopped when I got the Apple to ponce around with their Apple Mail software.
More and more though, I want to be device independent. I don’t really enjoy lugging any laptop about. I’d much rather use Google Apps. I think.
So here I am struggling away with 1.6 gig of email folders via Entourage. The only reason I’m doing it is because I’ve got Good Mobile Messaging running on my Nokia E61 which is heaven when you’re on the road, as I am often. When someone calls with an appointment, I can put it straight on to the device whilst sat on the train and then, crucially, forget about it — safe in the knowledge that it’s automatically been transferred to my Exchange folders. It’ll then pop-up at the right point on my Entourage.
My epiffany moment came just now when I’ve been playing around with the Gmail application on the Nokia E61. It is usable. It’s not as quick as I really do like it with GMM — but it is certainly workable. What’s more, Gmail works across any number of Nokia devices. So I could, conceivably, just take the N95 with me on some days and still remain connected to what’s going on, albeit via a T9 key interface.
But let’s face it, I hardly ever write more than two lines on my E61 running GMM.
The kicker? Well, there’s no integrated calendar.
Ah. But I’ve just remembered Goosync. That’s a good fix isn’t it? That’ll allow me to use the native device calendar.
And contacts sync? Well… that, I think, is a little bit more difficult. Google doesn’t appear to have a contacts sync option as yet. That’s a bit of an arse.
Running SMS Text News — and despite having a degree in Information Management — I don’t quite think I recognised how critical a function email is. The overhead of running on a legacy system such as Entourage is quite apparent when I take a step back and look.
When an email comes in, I read it and then I have to manually organise it, mostly by dragging it to a folder. Then trying to find it again is complicated if I haven’t precisely organised it. The spotlight search and even Google Desktop are ok, but dreadfully slow compared to a Gmail search.
A lot of the time I’m whacking back one-liners to people. A thank you or a confirmation or I’m forwarding stuff. Each action comes with an organisational overhead which, when you’re talking hundreds and hundreds of mails a day… no wonder I’m spending hours daily just coping.
So…..
Where does that leave my mobile email and my email solution strategy?
I’m thinking about dumping it all and going to Gmail and living with it.
Any suggestions?
Ewan,
I think going with Gmail is a god idea.
It certainly is a great solution for me.
I “dumped” all conventional email programs and solutions in favour of Gmail about a year ago. I don’t touch Apple Mail anymore, as beautiful as it is; it’s been removed from my “Startup Items.”
My personal email from my domain is pumped through Gmail as well. That affords me really good spam protection while I can easily separate personal mail from my generic Gmail address by way of search or filters & labels if needed.
I use the Gmail application on my E61 and everything email is wonderfully synchronized.
I also set up a Mail2Web account which I use with Mail for Exchange on my handset. A filter is setup so that emails with a special subject line are automatically forwarded to Mail2Web and then archived in Gmail. People who need to contact me urgently via email know what to put in the subject line.
If you wanted to use Push Email with Gmail then you could sign up for the Seven Always-On which is currently free and reportedly works really well with Gmail.
You might have probably guessed that I also use Google Calendar, Google fanboy that I am, and yes Goosync works great with my Nokia; the paid version even with multiple calendars! Google Calendar also provides the alarms via SMS which I find more reliable than email when I’m roaming.
As for my contacts, I still use Apple Adressbook which uses iSync to update my handset. Those contacts are then automatically synced with my Mail2Web account by Mail for Exchange.
This all works out perfectly for me and with some time management techniques applied to my email and voicemail (see here for an explanation) I can get through my correspondence fairly quickly.
Now RSS feeds, that’s an entirely different matter, lol.
On a sidenote, I’m really happy that Nokia is finally getting their act together and offers solutions for us Mac users. Nokia Media Transfer for Mac works flawlessly; even with my E61, thanks to Joshuas hack.
Posted by andydigitale on June 16th, 2007 at 4:19 am.I did for everything that doesn’t absolutely require syncing to my Treo. And even syncing seems old fashioned. If Google ever gets calendars and contacts online via 3G, I’m probably gonna dump Outlook entirely.
Managing information via search on gmail thru a Treo is a piece of cake, FWTW, too.
Posted by Scott on June 16th, 2007 at 4:50 am.Here’s how we have ours setup:
All mail goes first to Google Apps mailboxes, to take advantage of their excellent spam filter, and give us automatic backup of our email, and online access to email should GMM fail. GMail boxes are setup to forward to user@temporarydomain on GMM’s Exchange Server.
Good Mobile Messaging on e61 for when we’re out ‘n about
I use GroupCal to sync the GMM Exchange calendar to local iCal.app (bidirectional)
Contacts.app setup (just via Preferences) to sync to the GMM Exchange contacts
offlineimap, mutt and mairix for my regular email access, again polling the same IMAP box (overkill for most users.. but I’ve used mutt for about 8 years and see no reason to switch yet ;))
Mail.app for viewing any HTML emails using IMAP to the GMM Exchange box (I know Dan uses Thunderbird in place of Mail.app)
My only issue is that GroupCal’s a pretty heavy application - seems like it’s just screen-scraping Outlook Web Access (OWA) to get its information.. which means it goes through every event, every time you sync. For now I just manually sync when I feel like it, but other than that it all works very well indeed.
Posted by Jay Fenton on June 16th, 2007 at 11:56 am.Hi Ewan
Posted by Pat Phelan on June 16th, 2007 at 1:24 pm.What about running Parells
Thats what I do with a full copy of office, no delay etc, everything else on Google apps
Like pat I run Office under Parallels which is fast, although I dont always bother to load it up and use a combination of Entourage (setup with OWA access) for corp mail and Applemail setup for the various personal mail accounts, however I just read there and delete and if I ever want to find anything go online.
My email requirements are fairly low and my inboxes are usually empty as I follow the Inbox zero ethos, there are also some tips on using Quicksilver to respond to emails if it’s just a case of a single line thanks or confirmation.
Entourage is very quick for me so I guess it’s the size of your mail files that’s casing the problem but I’m sure you realise that already
Posted by Ian Hay on June 16th, 2007 at 8:03 pm.I got my PC setup. Brought it from my other place this afternoon and got it setup and operational. Downloaded the 1.6gig mail from Exchange to run on Outlook too.
I was just replying to some mail and thinking, ‘Geez, Outlook is actually quite nice…’ — I was enjoying the experience. Fast, easy…
… And then it’s crashed right in the middle of me replying ‘yes’ to someone. I mean, you couldn’t make this stuff up!
GOOOOOOOOOGLE! GOOOOOOOOOOOOGLE!
Posted by ewan on June 16th, 2007 at 9:28 pm.Pretty much the same setup as Jay Fenton as far as using gmail’s spam filter plus backup accounts. I find the gmail mobile app to be excellent on both mobiles I’ve tried it on, all functions have shortcut keys etc.
I’d say “go for it” - and don’t forget you can “pop” your gmail off via filters too.
And what’s with the Google-bashing in the media all of a sudden? But that’s another story.
Posted by Jonathan H on June 17th, 2007 at 12:03 am.I’m currently reviewing gmail/gapps for a couple small organizations and finding contacts to be a serious problem.
Simply put so far as I can tell bi-directional contact sync is impossible with *any* app using *any* 3rd party software, and contact management in gmail is so poor I can’t recommend users go just with them.
the really nasty part is once you enter contact info into gmail’s contacts it’s stuck there, there is no way to export 100% of the info entered into gmail’s contacts.
Anyone else find this an issue?
Posted by dana eckhoff on July 26th, 2007 at 8:56 pm.