online email clients

I’m running an experiment to see if I can use Gmail as my only email client. For the past few years, I’ve been using Mozilla Thunderbird to retrieve and read my email. It’s a great program and I recommend it to anyone looking for an email client to install on their desktop. It’s also great if you have several email addresses all of which require special needs.

I have about 5 primary email addresses between MODSonline, Tres, and the rest. Each account requires a specific email signature. I’ve always copied all of my email to Gmail in the event I want to check and reply when I am away from home. Gmail has good spam filters and makes an excellent online interface for all your email. You can even send your email via Gmail as if you are sending it from the person who received it.

I’d now like to make it easier for me to have my archived work email and home email all located in one place. If I can switch to Gmail, that would mean all my email is available where ever I go. Therefore the experiment is on. I am going to see if I can survive without a desktop client to deal with email.

Some issues that I’ve overcome:

• Gmail doesn’t really let you have different signatures for different email addresses. However, there are Mozilla FireFox addons (extensions) that resolve this. A combination of Greasemonkey and Gmail Signatures fixes that.
  One bug though… to save each signature I have to add one sig, restart FireFox , then add next sig… repeat. This also has to be done on each machine you plan to use your signatures on. Oh well. Still works.
• I’m not sure how to synchronize my contacts and calendar with my phone. Using GooSync, I can synchronize my phone without needing a desktop client. It’s all done over the air.

Posted in: Hints »  by: foyleman

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