I was setting up my Mac Mail program this weekend, and I can't hook it up to Hotmail because Microsoft doesn't use POP3, so I can't configure my mail program to get my mail for me. Bugger. I set up a GMail account to test out because it's easily used with Mac Mail.

So my questions are... well, in the topic title. I want to have an e-mail address that is POP3 compatible (or whatever you want to call it) so I can use my mail program to get my mail.

EDIT: I didn't say the word "mail" enough in this topic, so: mail, mail, mail. Mailmail? Maaaaiiilll!!! Mail, mail. MAIL.

I have an account, but rarely use it.  I figured that migrating my email from my hotmail account, which I have had for like a decade and have used for so many accounts, would be too time-consuming for my overly lazy and procrastinating self.  It does work well with Outlook Express, which Hotmail does not unless you pay some annual fee (around $20 a year, I think).

I've been using it just about from the start, and I'm very pleased with it--I have multiple accounts, even. The search-don't-sort gimmick hardly takes any time to get used to, and I find it very useful. The labels feature gives you the same basic convenience of traditional folders. I really like the archive feature; it's nice to tuck things out of the way forever (unless I want to see them, in which case I can search/view All Mail/view by Label). My old Hotmail was all but abandoned.

I have one account just for business/e-transactions, one for personal mail, one for stuff neither business nor personal (such as forum registrations), and one as a "file locker" that I share with friends when I want to transfer files (kind of like Yahoo briefcase in principle) I know Hotmail and Yahoo, etc, have similarly large account limits now, but the 2.8GB (10MB attachments per mail) really comes in handy.

The spam filter has been very effective. I have never seen a single spam in my inbox OR spambox for the business, file locker, and personal accounts. I'm careful with where I submit my personal address to, but I'm very impressed with how spam-free my business account is, considering how many different vendors I've purchased from over the years.

The personalized ads that appear to the right of messages are non-intrusive, I almost never notice them. They're just text, no flashing gifs. This is a non issue if you're using a client; it works great with Mozilla Thunderbird, and presumably similar clients such as Outlook Express.

Go for Gmail, it's well worth it.

(No, I do not work for Google. )

I use it as my free email account (for non-work stuff etc). I think it works really well and have little reason not to recommend it. However, the email scanning I find really creepy. The search don't sort thing and encouraging you not to delete anything is so it's all there for future scanning. And whatever dodgy ToS I clicked (not nessesarily legally binding by any means), those who send me mails did not agree to those so scanning incoming mail no matter what I clicked seems a little off to me.

If that doesn't bother you, there's no doubt it works really well so go for it.

I absolutely love my gmail account. Once you get the hang of using labels instead of a folder hierarchy, you'll never want to use any other system. It's set up so you never have to delete anything - just archive it. It catches 99.9% of the spam I receive, which admittedly isn't much anyway.

You can set it to allow your mail to be popped - just follow the directions and you can use Thunderbird or whatever the Mac equiv. is. I used to have gmail auto-archive my email when Outlook popped it, but now I just use the web interface all the time. I also have filters set to automatically label various emails when the come in.

I use a number of email aliases attached to my personal domain. One example is "purchases" at bamatone.net I use that login at newegg.com, etc. Any email that is sent to that address automatically gets labeled as "purchases." And so on and so forth.

Maybe more later if I think of it.

I wouldn't trade gmail for anything.  Hands down the best free email in the world, I'd even say it's the best email period.  It's spam filters are amazing and the ajax simplistic UI is pretty appealing.  I moved away from hotmail about 13 years ago when it started becoming the ad infested bloated site it is today.

~jb

I use it mainly for my purchases from VGMWorld and a few other sites. It's great knowing that my e-mail invoices won't suddenly vanish after a month or so as they would through my AOL account. Someday I'll probably do all my "business" via Gmail.

My free Excite email account that I'd had for for half a decade just pretty much stopped working.  I couldn't count on my emails being sent or received.  So my friend invited me to Gmail, and I've never thought of using another web mail service since.

Yeah, gmail is pretty amazing.  I started using it from very early on when I migrated from my folks' AOL account.  I can't imagine using anything else - no complaints here.

I love gmail as well. After having gone through a ton of free accounts after losing my university email some years back, I finally settled on Gmail.  The label feature is a godsend and is one of the main reasons I use the web interface -- I used to always DL my mail to Outlook Express before I started exploring the web browser version. And once gmail made a version that worked with my older computer, I started using it pretty much exclusively. Before this, my experience made me very leery of using web-based email accounts. The only thing is I wish it had wildcard searching, but that's a minor complaint. The spam filter is also excellent, though it does have a few errors now and then, but nothing I can't deal with.

Overall, a very good email service.

Thank you for your input, everyone. I started using GMail yesterday as a "trial run", and by the end of the day I was already porting my Play-Asia/eBay/CDJ accounts over to it. The ease of use, coupled with the archive function and the fact that it is not Hotmail makes it a great fit for me.

I'm a little late here, but I too recommend gmail.  It's by far the best web-based email I've used.  I don't know anything about "popping" or whatever, but it loads and runs faster than any other web based email I've used, and that alone makes it worth it for me.

Best ever.  I love the fact that Hotmail and eBay has huge ad banners in thier site and Gmail doesn't.  I guess MSFT and eBay really need money?  Regardless I've never, ever got spam and it intergrates perfectly with Thunderbird.

What about the option of adding other email accounts INTO gmail?

Under the accounts tab, there's an option to "Get mail from other accounts" which would be awesome if I could access my entire Hotmail archive through Gmail, so I could benefit from the advanced searches and sorting.

When you enter the info, it gives an error though, for which the help center says:

"This feature is currently only enabled for a limited number of users. We're working on making it more available soon"

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answ … swer=21289

I've had my hotmail account FOREVER, so the option to MERGE into Gmail would truely make it an ultimate killer app for me.  When this is option is supposed to be fully implemented?