Through David Pogue's weekly little tech column in the New York Times, I learn about all kinds of nifty stuff. And it always comes nicely packaged in a no-nonsense language even us mere mortals (= non-geek-gods = ME) can understand and follow.

Point in case: his write-up this week on Gmail's Fetch-Mail feature.

David writes: In essence, this feature tells Gmail to fetch messages from your existing POP account(s), so that it all shows up at Gmail.com. Better yet, Mail Fetcher offers you the chance to have outgoing messages stamped with your regular e-mail address. In other words, Gmail.com becomes a free, invisible mail processing center, leaving no trace of its involvement. The people you correspond with will never know that their messages, or your responses, went anywhere but straight to your computer and back.

[Note: I know. The update on Dave's blog says the return address isn't getting correctly displayed. May not work from an iPhone, but from a regular browser it does. I tested it, and so far, it worked. ]

As I'm leaving to San Francisco on Sunday for a few photo shoots - wasn't looking forward to yet again having to log into each of my three email accounts separately (Emeraldbay, Obsidian Stock, Gmail) to stay in touch on the road - I thought I'd give the Fetch-Mail thingy a try.

And Oh My. How insanely useful is this!

Now I get email from both of my POP accounts delivered straight to my Gmail. So I don't get the messages all mixed up, I slap a label on each POP account (kinda what folders do in standard email programs), and now email from those accounts skip the Gmail inbox altogether and go straight to archive. Convenient! (You can turn this feature on in your Gmail by going to Settings -> Accounts -> Get mail from other accounts: Edit Info -> Archive incoming messages (Skip the Inbox)).

I also checked the "Leave messages on server" option on each POP account - so I'll be able to download all my messages into my Eudora desktop email program once I'm back home.

Granted - this all sounds lovely in theory. How well it checks out in the real world is left to be seen. I shall report on it once I'm back on August 2nd.

Good god, you're still using Eudora for your client-side email program?? This is the 21st century, you know... ;)

Thank you for informing me, Jon.

Not only am I aware that we are living in the 21st century - but also that Eudora is a *fantastic* email program.

It does all anybody would ever want it to do (except make coffee in the morning - although some geek will probably fix that some day too), is simple, no-frills, a work horse and *reliable* as a rock.

What are you using? Freaking Outlook? Don't tell me. I'll lose respect for you ... ;)

I agree. Eudora is still a good email program for POP accounts.

No Outlook for me!

Sorry, I now you already hate me for this, but I'm an Outlook user for a variety of reasons:

1) I need POP, IMAP, HTTP, and Exchange support in one-box.

2) The sorting and filtering features of outlook are far better than other desktop clients (like Thunderbird). And when you have 12 accounts you check on a daily basis, I need all the help I can get.

3) With the amount of add-ons for Outlook, commercial or otherwise, it just works and does everything that I need to organize my life in one package. While I know Thunderbird offers RSS support, Newsgator and other 3rd party add-ins (some free) for Outlook are much cleaner, nicer, and more flexible.

4) I need calendar support along with my email - makes it easier for me to keep myself organized.

Eudora are great for POP/IMAP accounts, but if you have more complicated needs, there are just sometimes where commercial applications work better (which is why you don't see a lot of people replacing MS's Office Suite with Open Office -- OS is good, but Office is just better).

Of course, if I wasn't tied to needing a solid Exchange client, I'd consider moving to something else, but unfortunately I do.