Thursday, December 28, 2006

Gmail Mail Fetcher Screenshots
By Tony Ruscoe

As reported earlier this month, Google has been slowly rolling out a feature known as Mail Fetcher which allows users to check up to five POP3-enabled email accounts from within Gmail.

It’s been over two weeks since this much sought after feature was first spotted and many Gmail users still don’t have it in their account. If you’re one of those users but you want to see what you’re missing, the Google Operating System blog has posted some screenshots and comments about what to expect.

This new feature also asks if you’d also like to send mail from the POP3 address you’re adding. Of course, being able to send emails from non-Gmail addresses has been a feature of Gmail for a long time but many users have complained that their Gmail address is still included in the mail headers. This means that some clients, such as Microsoft Outlook, will display any emails sent from the alternative address as follows:

From: username@gmail.com on behalf of Name [username@example.com]

Since this new feature requires users to enter their POP3 account details, I would have expected this annoyance to have disappeared. Unfortunately, it’s still there, meaning the only way to send emails using the Gmail interface without your gmail.com address being revealed is to use Google Apps for Your Domain – and since GAFYD accounts and Google Accounts aren’t compatible, that would mean maintaining two different accounts: one for your email and one for all your other Google services.

Sorry, Google, but I’m still not ready to completely make the switch to Gmail...

Gmail Mail Fetcher Screen ... by Tony Ruscoe | Comments (18)

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