What! Jared Switched from Yahoo to Gmail?

Ok... I give in!

I have long been a holdout in moving all of my email over to Gmail. I have finally done it. Well, started the process. I've managed to move a few thousand old emails into Gmail from my Yahoo Plus account using POP3. So far it has been very painless although a slow process.

I probably should explain why I finally decided to make the move. I have a feeling a few people are going to gloat a little because I was so persistent with my not moving to the bliss that is Gmail.

First off, I am about to have my Yahoo Plus account expire. I have until the end of December and then I will have to pay the anual $20 fee. For that price I get an enhanced spam filter (that doesn't work well... my next point), no adds, and some added features (like POP3 access and additional filters). Since I don't really want to pay the extra money, and I am not a fan of normal old Yahoo mail, moving to another platform had one point to its advantage.

Secondly, I've been getting spam! Lots and lots of spam. And my Yahoo account isn't slowing down. Now, this isn't a ton of spam. Probably about 25 messages a day, and since I check my email about 10 times a day it is only a few here and there. The problem is, it is consistent. Also, it is very obvious spam. I've even had some false positives on my spam filter that I had to hunt down. That isn't an easy task when your filter blocks over 2000 messages a week!

Lastly, and most influential in my decision, is the free IMAP. Well, I don't have a iPhone (and don't even want one!) but I am a very heavy user of Outlook 2007. I have long used it for my calendar and tasks. I keep it very organized and use all of its advanced features. (FYI: I'm not moving to Google calendar yet, although I can import others into my Outlook very easily.) With IMAP I can have my email on my laptop and desktop in an application based environment. Also, I have long been a fan of not having email tied to one desktop and since everything is on the Google servers, I can just use Gmail as is when I am not using Outlook.

Other considerations were mainly that absolutely everyone (maybe wrong here, but then again) uses Gmail. While I probably could have moved over to Gmail earlier, I guess it is good that I waited. Gmail now offers a clear advantage over the competition. As Google continues to add features I only see myself becoming more dependent on the Googleplex, just like everyone else.

If you are reading this on Facebook, I left a comment with my new address... if you are reading this on my blog... no luck on getting my new address (I'm talking to you, spammers!).

I still am not happy with how my school email is being treated when I forward it go Gmail. I'll have to work out those issues here soon.

My other big task is updating my account information, mainly email address, on the dozens of websites that I use. Well, at least the ones I still care about. I have a feeling that I'll be forced to check my Yahoo email for a while but I will probably end up setting up an automatic reply saying I don't answer emails to that address anymore. The problem with Yahoo is you can't forward or have POP3 access using the free version.

I guess that wraps up my Gmail blog entry. I haven't had the opportunity to use it much yet. However, from what I have used so far, I do like it.