Now that I’m using Gmail as my primary mail provider, I’ve gone searching for a few utilities to make it work more like a desktop client.
The two biggest gripes I have with webmail are that it doesn’t work with mailto: links and that you have to check manually to see if you have mail. I’ve found good solutions for both of these issues. At work on my PC I use Google’s own Gmail Notifier, which pops up a little dialog by the system tray. It also lets you associate it to mailto: links, but seems to get confused if you also use Outlook for another account. For MacOS X I’m really liking gCount. It sits in your menu bar and turns red and optionally plays a sound when you get new mail. To make gCount your default mail handler you’ll need to open Apple’s Mail, go to its General Preferences, and select it instead of Mail.
I considered using Gmail Loader to import all my old mail, but decided against it because the mail doesn’t get imported with the right date and I think it’ll only be a matter of time before Google implements an import function (they already have for contacts).