Go and have a walk, relax and enjoy life … Just kidding. Of course some of us just can’t afford this luxury, so we would have to think of another way of dealing with such a problem.
I have been Using GMail now for over a year and I don’t want to miss it. I used to use Microsoft Outlook, but after using it for may years – even though I really enjoy the Interface of Outlook 2007 – I wanted to move on and free myself from the overpower of Microsoft. One important fact for me was, that I needed top access my mail from anywhere, so it had to be a web-based solution. I had tried Yahoo Mail for a while but it wasn’t the optimum. I then got invited to Googlemail. After using it for a while I decided, that this was what I wanted. Since, GMail it has been updated, I have installed a few Greasemonkey extensions, and I am using some of the Google Mail Labs features, so I have a nice customised mail client, that exactly fits my needs.
Yesterday Googlemail broke. For about two hours I (and the rest of the world) was not able to use my mail. I could access it, as I had installed the Google Offline Mail Feature, but i could neither receive nor send mail.
Today I set up my good old Outlook as a backup solution. Using IMAP I can now in such emergencies still use my Mail. You can of course use whatever mail client you want, just set it up for IMAP: use your Googlemail Address (including @gmail.com) as user name, your password and the following Server:
- imap.googlemail.com (incoming mail server)
- smtp.googlemail.com (outgoing mail server)
You will also have to configure your mailclient to use SSL, as Google only allows a secure access to Gmail. Go to Advanced setting (or where ever you set it up) and use SSL with IMAP PORT 993 and SMTP Port 465. Thats it.