Okay. It took me awhile to get on board but I am now completely sold. Gmail is the only email system you will ever need. I know that is a grandios statement to make but after using it for only a short period of time, I highly recommend it. I have cut my email time in half both checking and responding. I am able to search email more effectively and quickly. I am able to tag email in multiple ways and I seem to have ample storage space. I hate the fact that I am selling my soul to Google but they are providing a valuable service.

You can create/setup email accounts to check multiple emails as well as respond to emails through the account it came from. This is extremely helpful to me and is saving me a lot of headaches. Before, I kept email separate so I knew where it came from and how to respond (from which account) but now, Gmail takes care of all that for me. I have one log-in and great ability. Plus, it is very mobile. Wherever I am with a connection to the Internet, I have ALL my mail, ALL my contacts, everything.

I am moving to more cloud computing (documents, presentations, etc.) over the next few months and doing a lot of reading about the subject. This has implications for academic computing which I think will be good but I want to know more. How do we convince students and faculty to trust this technology? How will it benefit the classroom? What equipment does it replace or free up for other purposes? I am a tech geek who loves this stuff but I am a pragmatist as well. As good as cloud computing is, it will be sometime before certain faculty or students will jump on board and for good reason. It is up to folks like me to break the system, stretch the system and ask the tough questions so that when the majority of faculty come on board, the ground work has been laid.

For now though, grab a Google account and play with Gmail. You will be glad you did as your life becomes more organized and accessible.