I’ve actually had a Gmail account for about ten days now. But it is only now that I’ve tried to really play with it. I’m impressed. Now I understand why people have been raving that it feels very much like a desktop application. The response is quite fast, even on the dial-up connection I’m using.

Thanks to gExodus, I’ve now imported all the recent mail from my previous e-mail account. I’ve actually tried the more popular GMail Loader (GML) but it kept hanging on me, although I’m not exactly sure if the problem is in the software itself. Apparently, Tri-Isys, my ISP (through their ISP Bonanza prepaid package) seems to be blocking all outgoing TCP/IP connections to SMTP ports. Before I suspected this, I’ve given up on making GML work and tried gExodus instead.

gExodus didn’t work either at first, but at least it didn’t hang on me. gExodus fortunately gave a helpful message: “Can’t connect to the SMTP server.” At first I thought that maybe Google’s servers are rejecting outside connections to its SMTP servers so I tried my hosting service’s SMTP server. No luck either. Then in dawned on me that maybe my ISP is the one blocking the connections. I tried their SMTP server and gExodus worked like a charm.

Interestingly, my anti-virus software intercepted all the e-mail and scanned each and every one before sending it down the line. That’s the first time I’ve seen it do that.

Now I’m wondering if maybe GML would’ve worked if I used my ISP’s SMTP server. Let me try…. It worked! Heh. Then again, GML should’ve printed out helpful messages instead of hanging.

The only problem I have now is how I can download my UP Webmail e-mail so that I can import them to my Gmail account. Time to look up my contacts at the UP Computer Center.