Gmail rocks .. here's why.

I have got ZERO spam on gmail in last three months,
only about 30 friends have that address (kind of
friends who never forward chain letters).

I haven't published it or written my gmail address
on any commercial forms, hence so far so good.

I got hooked to gmail, the day it offered
https access
meaning my mail was safe from local snoppers.

I never realised https was so light-weight till I used
it on a daily basis on an old win98/64Mb/celeron400
(for comparison Knoppix/X thrashes the RAM on this machine).

Now I use Eudora 6.1/pop3 secure connect to gmail from home,
I don't have to worry about the gmail quotas.

On the flip side, I have to use IE & Firefox + Java.
Instead of faster and safer Opera without Java.
Firefox makes my Win98/64Mb disk thrash,
IE brings in viruses. All of them are leave emails
and address-book on the disk.

With Gmail pushing Firefox and it being free,
means soon Firefox will be faster and better than
Opera - that's the way cookie crumbles.

Here's how to convert return addresses into an image on linux:
> pbmtext $LOGNAME@gmail.com | convert - email_address.gif
Now I need my mailer to do it automatically, and also to
shear the image.