Now that my notebook computer has wireless broadband (via 3G/CDMA based card) I now have secure internet anywhere I go, and I like it! The only down side of this arrangement has been with my email situation, since I like to use a local mail client (good old Outlook Express) but don’t want to pull all my messages from my server (because then the only copy would be stored on my very portable, and hence very stealable/losable computer). This has meant that every sign-in has been taking longer (since the number of message headers continually increases).

Enter Google Mail, apparently now available to anyone with a mobile phone, and finally I have a good solution: From now on all of my mail will be forwarded to a non-public GMail address, which allows POP access but also keeps messages archived (even though your POP client will think they have been deleted from the server). What this means is that I need only one sign in to collect all my mail, it is secure and fast, and should my tiny computer suddenly asplode I can rest assured that all my mail is still accessible at mail.google.com. Up to 2.6GB of it apparently, which should be plenty, considering that all my email including images and attachments going back to the end of 1997* (!) is still under 500MB compressed.

It takes a little setting up, but based on my initial experience I recommend this approach, regardless of whether you prefer using webmail or POP clients. Google Mail’s webmail interface looks quite interesting, especially the conversation threading (you have to try it out to see what I mean).

* When I left my first programming job. I wonder now what happened to all the email from before I left… at least 4 years worth I think. Why don’t I have it backed up somewhere…?