gmail now can reply in a chat-window, when the contact is online. The Chat-History then is saved in the email-conversation.

mail.google.com/support/bin/an ...
jmboard.com/gw/2006/06/01/gmai ...

wow..
cool

thanks for the info!

more..
here:
mail.google.com/mail/help/abou ...

It is a nice feature. Works well.

googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/0 ...

That's a slick little feature. I can think of occasions where I wanted something like this. Sometimes replying to an e-mail just isn't fast enough (!) -it's also good for those 1-word replies.