Get notified of Google Mail

Get notified of Google Mail

It is far from unanimous, but there is growing opinion that the best mail service now available is Gmail by Google. Earlier this month, Gmail began a new feature which allows users to pick up all mail from their Hotmail accounts, which (if I'm counting correctly) is Reason 387 to switch to Gmail.

GMail Notifier is a well thought-out helper that makes the excellent Google Mail server even better.

Gmail Notifier is an excellent helper for the web-based service, or even if you download Gmail to your own machine.

Google itself has a small program that checks for email and lets you know when new mail arrives. But it has a fatal flaw, in that it will only check one Gmail account.

Now, many of us keep three or seven email addresses for various reasons. For example, it is useful to separate business from home email, and it is also useful (for me, anyhow) to have a third address I can give to businesses and web sites where I have to register, because I know they will be sending me a lot of email I consider to be spammish.

Gmail Notifier is a small program that sits in the Windows tray. It checks one or many Google Mail accounts every two minutes (by default, but changeable) and when it detects new mail it says "new mail" and flashes the tray icon _ or one or none of those, your choice.

The small main menu with its few options is not especially pretty, and it simply lists your Gmail account names and how many active messages are in your inbox of each.

You can add a Gmail account, remove it and order the program to check the mail Right Now by right-clicking on the tray icon. You can also tell the program to start automatically with Windows.

Why use it? Why not just leave a browser window open? Well, first of all, Gmail Notifier uses less than 15KB of memory to check many email accounts, way less than 10 percent of just one average open window in Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Firefox.

It's also out of the way, but never forgets to check the mail.

The program only works properly on Gmail accounts. There are other good email checkers around, but for Google Mail, this one is excellent.

The program is housed on a simple but informative website at (www.gmailnotifier.com)