I signed up for a Gmail account a while ago, but as I really love the power of Nelson Email Organizer to access my email on Outlook, I had no real use for Gmail. (NEO is amazing! No more folders or filtering. Your Inbox becomes a powerful database.)
The main problem I had with using Outlook and my Treo to access my BU email account was SPAM. I used Mailwasher, a free-standing antispam program designed to strip spam from the server before I download it on Outlook or my Treo, but it has major weaknesses. First it misses a lot of spam (unless you tell it to auto delete all suspected span in which case you risk false positives), and second, it requires my home PC to be running Mailwasher at all times. Sometimes my PC crashes when I am away from home in which case I lose all spam protection.
Since Gmail Now allows downloading your email via a POP3 connection, you can use it with Outlook on your PC. I can auto-forward my BU email to Gmail which then strips out all the spam before I download it to my desktop using Outlook. Relying on a company with the power of Google to develop and keep up-to-date potent antispam filters seems to be the wave of the future.
The only problem I had with this setup was with my Treo. When I download my email from my desktop, I could not then access it from my Treo even though the email remains on the Gmail server. Once downloaded via POP3, it cannot be downloaded again. I solved this by setting up a second Gmail account to which my main Gmail account forwards all email (including email forwarded to it from my BU account). I then access this secondary email account from my Treo.
The final twist on the setup was dealing with sent mail. One the great advantages of using Outlook with Gmail is that Gmail keeps all sent mail sent through Gmail on the server (even mail sent using Outlook). But I did not want my Treo sent mail to be kept in the secondary Gmail account. Fortunately Snappermail can be configured to receive from one account and send from another. So I receive from my secondary Gmail account and send through my primary one. Problem solved.
Bottom line: NO MORE SPAM on my Treo or my desktop (without having to buy, maintain, and run an ineffective antispam program). Plus web access to all my saved email from wherever I am–including my office PC and my laptop.
There is but one final problem to be solved. So far as I know, Outlook will not sync its sent mail folder with the sent mail folder on Gmail. That means that I will have much sent mail on Gmail that I cannot access with my NEO. If anyone has a workaround for this, I would love to hear it.
PS: Don’t write me about the privacy issues with Gmail. I know about them and, at this point, am willing to run the risk.
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