In my previous post I sang the praises of Gmail, but it isn’t perfect.

1. You can’t sort mail by sender or by subject. This is mitigated by the powerful search capability of Gmail so it doesn’t bother me.
2. There are no read receipts. It is my understanding that if you use a regular desktop mail client (eg: Outlook), just because you request a read receipt doesn’t mean you will actually get one. Also, the recipient’s client has to support it, and the recipient is usually able to prevent read receipts from being sent. Despite the apparent limitations of read receipts, this seems to be one of the most commonly requested features on various forums and Google Groups. Since I rarely request read receipts, I can live without these too.
3. HTML signatures with images. This was a biggie for me. When I used Outlook I had several signatures – one for when I send a new message with the company logo, contact details, etc, all nicely formatted. Then I had a different signature when I replied or forwarded – it had some of the address information removed along with the logo. I spent ages trying to find a way of enabling nice signatures in Gmail. I tried the Firefox add-on called Better Gmail 2, but it didn’t work, and I actually found it to be a bit unstable. Then I found Blank Canvas. This Firefox add-on is sensational – I can create multiple signatures (like I did in Outlook); they are nicely formatted including logo; I can choose which one to insert in a new message; and it just works without a hitch.

Now that I have my signatures configured, Gmail / Google Apps is proving to be fantastic.