Giving Gmail a Go
For quite some time I’ve been avoiding the Gmail craze. Not because I didn’t want to participate, no that’s not it at all. In fact, I’ve been relatively certain that Gmail was the best possible way to handle mail currently available to mortal man. So why the hesitation? Well way back when I decided to entire the modern internet community–start blogging and reading blogs, sharing photographs, etc–I had given a lot of thought to the different options out there.
At the time I was primarly considering Drupal versus Wordpress versus Blogger, but the points of contention were exactly the same as my current wrestling with mail providers. While the hosting and feature set of Blogger was(is?) superior to the host-it-yourself solutions of Drupal and Wordpress, I really liked the idea of owning my own data. It would be in a database that I would own, I would back up, I could translate or transfer (which came in handy when I switched from Drupal to Wordpress), that I would control. So I ruled out Blogger because I would lose that control, and I continued to choose between the host-it-yourself options.
With email I came to the same conclusion. I was never interested in a Gmail account because I already have my own web propery with tbradshaw.net and the mail hosting at Dreamhost is absolutely fantastic. I’ve been wrestling with the idea of trying Gmail for quite a while now (there’s actually a “Draft” blog post in WordPress right now called “Gmail Invite” where I never followed through) and last night I decided to take the plunge. I did it for a number of reasons:
- K-State’s email sucks. - After we moved our CIS department email to CNS we realized something very critical that we weren’t expecting. CNS’s email reliability hinged on the fact that hosting just ksu.edu was “easy”. The added complication of our email and especially (perhaps to the point of making CIS insignificant) oznet has mostly destroyed the quality of service from K-State.edu email. Even when it is working, it’s remarkably slow.
- Gmail’s Up-times Approach Infinity - Well, DreamHost’s uptimes are pretty fantastic too, but I have no idea “how many nines” Google pulls. I bet it’s a lot.
- Google has all the sweet toys. - One thing I really miss is not being able to check out all the sweet new toys from Google, a lot of which are starting to be tied together with the Gmail account.
- Gmail establishes Identity - Just as having tbradshaw.net does a lot to establish identity, so goes one’s Gmail address. I have already slumbered long enough to lose the possibility of getting tbradshaw, t.bradshaw, travis.bradshaw, travisbradshaw, or anything similar. ctb is invalid. c.travis.bradshaw is actually a pretty good identifier for me, even if it different than what I’ve been using previously. Starting now landed me c.travis.bradshaw for my Gmail identity.
- I can keep another copy. - With most/all forwarding mechanisms, I can also keep a copy on the IMAP server just like I have all this time. So while the privacy concerns with Google might be a small issue, in the general case I have nothing to lose.
And so that’s it. I’m now a Gmail participant and currently in the process of getting all of my previous k-state email onto gmail so I can really give that search functionality a ride.