I spent alot of the weekend in gmail, and although I am in no way prepared to write anything in depth on it, I did have some initial thoughts.

The interface is slick.  Very fast to move around, and very minimialistic, which I like.  I also like the keyboard shortcuts, and that the list is always at the bottom (although I would prefer context sensitive).

I like the star idea.  You can click on the star in any message, and then the message will appear in your "star" folder until you un-star it.  This is a nice replacement to a follow up flag.

I also like that the number of new messages show up in the task bar, making it easy to see how much mail you have at any time.  The only thing I don't like is on my laptop the taskbar icon gets cut off a bit, and I can't see the number (I see the open paren though  :(

The spam filter is on par, if not better then yahoo's.  I have been very impressed with it.  Another side effect, since I mark each message with a label of which account it came in on, going through my spam I can easily see which account it was sent to (or if it was broadcast).

So label, which account, what is he talking about?  Well, I went 1 further then the plunge.  I ended up forwarding (or sending a copy) of every account I have to gmail (obviously except my work account which wouldn't quite be appropriate), and label them as they come in.  I figure if I can have the power of google search for one account, might as well do it on all.  This decision was at least made after more then 5 minutes of playing with it like my original plunge.

Quick wrap up, gmail rocks so far.  I'm anxious to use it for a complete work week and form a more educated opinion, but my initial thoughts are great.  I am working on a wish list, though, cause there are a few things I would like to see.

I expect to have some invites sometime soon.  I have not decided what to do with them.  Anyone who thinks they might not be able to live without one, drop a comment or some feedback on why.  I expect at least 1 of my invites will go to a blog reader, but maybe 2 if there is good response.

PS : Love some of the remarks from the app.  Like when I delete some stuff, the success message is sometimes “Who needs to delete with 1000 megs of mail”, or when the spam is empty, “hooray no spam”.  I like to see a sense a humor in my software  :)