Gmail Review: I've had a few days to play -- incessantly -- with Gmail, Google's beta email offering, and I'm really liking it. It seems like everyone else has posted complete Gmail reviews with screenshots, so I'm just going to supplement with my thoughts, rather than duplicate the efforts on the people in Jason's extensive list. Leave a comment if anybody has any particular questions you'd like answered. Also, I've given my thoughts on the privacy implications of Gmail in a previous post.

Overall, although I wouldn't go so far as to use the word "revolutionary," Gmail is making some important strides in email user interface. Particularly, it makes a lot of sense to me that we should be thinking of our email in the context of conversations, not just individual messages. In fact, in Gmail it's not even POSSIBLE to separate an email from its thread. Gmail changes the user's email schema from individual emails to a thread, and presents previous messages in a way that looks like stacked file folders, so you can only see the label on the folder. It's easy to click on a hidden message to expand it. Also, Gmail hides quoted text in the bottom of emails, as well as excess header info -- a nice touch. I was surprised at how easy it was to understand going from the index view to the conversation view. Seeing an entire conversation listed as one item in an inbox looks a little odd at first, but after a second it makes instant sense.

Searching is REALLY powerful. I like being able to set more than one label (folder) for a message, and I'm finding that I'm able to locate the messages I'm looking for more quickly than I used to be able to. The search and filter interface is a bit opaque, though: you can do an "advanced" filter (using Google search commands and logical operators) by typing the advanced query into the section on the wizard for finding words in the document (no field), but this isn't obvious. It would be nice to have an advanced filter editor. Also, you can't edit filters (maximum of 20) once they're created.

As for the ads, I really don't notice them, and I was surprised how much they are literally keyworded (if I write "bla" in my email, I will get ads about "bla") rather than what the media seems to be implying, which is that Gmail would build up a profile of what topic areas I'm interested in. I would also never have expected a keystroke shortcut system for web-based email, and I certainly didn't think I'd like it, but I'm actually using it quite a bit. The reply box at the bottom of the page that expands also is very intuitive.

The one thing that I really think would be the major deciding factor before I get rid of my desktop mail package altogether is that I'd like a biff-style program to sit in my WinXP system tray to alert me when I have new mail. Ideally, I could also set this program to tell me either the senders of new messages, or give me labels with counts ("New messages: label1 (10), label2 (2)").

Other minor stuff, most of which I'm sure Google has already thought about:

• It would be nice to have a "saved searches" box under Labels to the left, which would let me do a one-click search for things I look for commonly. This might make sense if I wanted to find all messages from Rob on a certain topic, but didn't want to create a label to filter messages at the time I receive them.
• It's not intuitive in a filter how to create a filter that matches "or" patterns -- that is, I'm not sure how to do "from:jsmith OR to:jsmith" in the filter creation interface. Also, as above, I can't figure out how to modify a saved filter -- it seems I just have to delete it and make a new one.
• Messages should be marked as read if I archive them from the inbox without reading them. I shouldn't have to check them, mark them as read, and then move them to the archive.
• It appears that Google is planning on adding import/export capability to Gmail, which would probably be a dealbreaker for many people if they couldn't take their mail with them.

Incidentally, I agree with Denise that Gmail is a pretty big deal -- it's changing not only the way people use email, but also the way the law will use email, which is an issue I hadn't really thought of. Definitely worth a read.