[plug] [OT] Gmail Opinions

[Trevor Phillips]

On Thursday 17 June 2004 17:57, James Devenish wrote:
> In message <20040617094423.GD26977 at patrick.wattle.id.au>
>
> I don't know much about Gmail but can I ask...does it mean that you have
> to have an international network connection working in order to be able
> to check your e-mail?

Yes, yes it does. Another reason I'd prefer to have its functionality on a 
local server. I'm a big advocate on not relying on external hosting for 
important services.

Which is a bit of a dilemma, because it (Gmail) IS really quite cool.

I guess, technically, it could save you in traffic, depending on your usage 
patterns. I get a LOT of SPAM, and having it being filtered before it even 
gets anywhere near my LAN saves on traffic. Instead of taking the traffic hit 
when it's delivered, you take the hit every time you view it. Given the extra 
"interface" overhead, viewing plain-text would take more traffic - but if you 
trash a lot without reading it (which I do), and you don't open EVERY 
attachment, then you could save on bandwidth.

But if you NEED your E-mail access there & then, then yes, it's a problem.

It'll be interesting to see if they open up some APIs upon final release. 
Having a local mirror of recent E-mail would be handy...

I also wouldn't mind a "hook" to spawn external client for sending & replying 
to E-mail. Could probably make a Firefox Extension to do that easily enough.

-- 
. Trevor Phillips             -           http://jurai.murdoch.edu.au/ . 
: Web Technical Administrator     -          T.Phillips at murdoch.edu.au : 
| IT Services                        -              Murdoch University | 
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