I’m an unabashed GMail (Google Mail) fan.  It’s fast, searches work great, and I love tags vs. folders.   It simply works great.  And it’s easy to manage multiple email addresses from one spot.   If you’ve got an email address that you want to keep, you can manage nearly any email address through Google.

And Google has released a new option that makes it better.  It’s a local cached and sync’d copy of your email.  It does a couple of things:

It offers offline access.   So if you’re working somewhere without internet, you’ve got your email.  And in the same format and features you are used too.   Even search works. Awesome.  Of course, you won’t get new emails, and your sent emails won’t go until you have internet, but great for flights or anywhere without a connection. They also offer a “flakey connection mode”.  I’ve got a client I want to set up with Google Apps email, but I’ve hesitated because his office is in the sticks and uses satellite email that is intermittent.  This takes care of that. Cool, unexpected feature?  Even when you are connected, it’s clearly, clearly faster on my machine.  Selecting a new folder or hitting compose simply happens quicker.

Downsides?  Of course, it will use some local storage space, so if your harddrive is packed, maybe not the best option.   Other than that, I can’t think of any. You need to have Gears , but if you’re using Chrome you’ve already got it, otherwise it’s easy to install.  Then

Click Settings and click the Labs tab. Select Enable next to Offline Gmail. Click Save Changes. After your browser reloads, you’ll see a new “Offline0.1” link in the upper righthand corner of your account, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don’t already have it.

Want to sign up for Google Mail? http://mail.google.com

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