Five reasons you should be using Gmail

Gmail has been around for quite a while now.  From it's early days as an invite only service to last year when it finally left bet, Gmail has provided simple, effective, and powerful web-based email for millions.  Personally, I've been using Gmail since the invite-only days and I couldn't be happier with my experience.  Here is my five top reasons you should switch to Gmail for your primary email address.

1. Check your email from anywhere.  Some people still use ISP based email address (like @att.com, @aol.com, @earthlink.net, etc.).  These email addresses are usually set up to download locally to people's computers.  This works great when you are checking your email on your computer, but what when you're on a trip or using a friend's computer?  Gmail can be checked and used from any web browser and most email/data equipped cell phones.  If you have a device that has a web browser, you have access to your email all the time.
2. Incredible, super-effective email spam filters.  With Gmail, I have gone over a month without ever getting one spam message in my email inbox.  If I ever do get spam it is one click away from being reported as spam and removed from my inbox.  Gmail allows you to look through your spam messages as well to make sure that it didn't send a legitimate message to the spam folder.
3. Label your emails to keep them organized.  Gmail includes a powerful set of organization tools.  Among the best tools is the label system.  You can create and manage color-coded labels that act like folders keeping some emails separate from others.  
4. Filter your emails to automagically keep your inbox organized.  You can create Gmail filters that do everything from automatically sending some emails to the trash, to marking certain emails from a specific sender with a label.  Use the filters to automatically forward email from a domain or sender to another address.  
5. Your email is one quick search away.  Gmail gives your over 7 Gigabytes of storage and encourages you to archive your email instead of deleting it.  That means that if you need to look up an email from 5 years ago, you can type some words from the email, a sender name or address, or even a type of attachment and search through the results for the email.  This feature has saved my butt more than a few times.

Gmail is a powerful tool and one of the top email options out there.  I've only scratched the surface of what can be done with the web based Gmail and in the coming months I plan to share more of what this web app powerhouse can do.  Visit www.gmail.com to sign up today.