There are dozens of GMail apps available but which applications are indispensable? While I can’t answer this question for you, I can certainly share my experiences…

While I have tried almost every GMail application released to date, I use two GMail apps everyday and there are a few other applications are essential for new GMail users. First up, the applications that I use day-in and day-out.

Imspire’s GSuite

Such a simple concept. Nothing earth shattering here but I find it extremely useful. GSuite runs happily in my system tray 24/7 and lets me know when I have new mail. It also has an embedded IE browser which I find very handy when I want to read my mail. It allows me to run my desktop without a browser if I wish but GMail is always only a click or two away. One of the nicest features it offers is browser preloading. This saves time and insures that my GMail account is always available within seconds. A few other nice features that GSuite offers:

* a handy search interface for GMail, Google, and Google images.
* mailto: redirection

GMail Notifier for Firefox

One of the challenges with GMail is that it uses cookies to manage your account information, at least if you don’t want to login every single time you need to do something mail-related. This works great right up to the point when you have more than one account. I have two. I don’t advocate that you get two as Google doesn’t want you to - at least not until they GA the software but since I live and breathe GMail I have two accounts - one for my personal mail and one for this weblog. I prefer not to deal with logging in and out of my accounts from Firefox so I run a two-browser system, Firefox and IE. On the IE side I use GSuite as I prefer not to use IE for anything else (GO FIREFOX!) and I use the GMail Notifier for Firefox for my other account and read that mail using Firefox.

Small list… If you had asked what I thought I would be using back in June or July I would have responded GMailerXP with no question. Why don’t I use it? It hasn’t been GA’d yet. I have grabbed the source and compiled it and I also downloaded a packaged beta-ish release and while it is coming along, it is not yet there. It holds a lot of promise - primarily in that it promises to deliver my mailbox to me while I am offline when I am sitting in the airport waiting for that delayed flight to Dallas or Chicago. Now that will complete my world… Hurry up guys!

GMail Import Tools

So that leaves us with those few indispensible tools for GMail newbies wishing to import their existing mail into GMail. There are a couple of core import tools - GML and gExodus. I have used both of them and they both get the job done. Early in the game, I was leaning towards gExodus but Mark has added some nice features to GML that has me currently favoring it. By the way, Mark maintains a very nice GMail utilities list that includes some great GMail conversion and import resources that I choose not to duplicate here. You can see for yourself here. For a more complete list of the various import tools, including tools that will do things like import your PINE mail and contacts or import your Yahoo contacts, look at my
GMail import area.

So that’s it and while I left several dozen quite good utilities off the list you know where I stand regarding usage. Now it’s your turn… what GMail utilities do you find indispensible?