I started using Gmail about 9 months ago when I picked up my first Blackberry, and quickly found that IMAP and POP3 via BIS are on a 15 minute delay, but Yahoo and Gmail accounts are real time push, just like a BES. I started forwarding all of my email accounts to Gmail and, after a few days of acclimating myself to labels, archiving, and other oddities, I was off and going. Nine months later, I was continually frustrated with my inability to organize myself using Gmail’s web interface. Near instance search was great, but the whole “label” concept just didn’t work for me. I desperately wanted nested folders and more keyboard driven filing abilities, and a task-list built right into the interface would be nice too.
Not willing to give up Gmail’s obvious benefits (access-anywhere ability, instant Blackberry, search search search) I decided to give Gmail’s recently added IMAP feature a whirl with Mozilla’s Thunderbird , which I consider to be the least-bad IMAP mail client out there. Using this article from Lifehacker as my guide, I began to tweak, test, and finally settle on a good configuration and a gaggle of extensions that make my life in Thunderbird SO MUCH NICER than it ever was in GMail’s (also least-bad) web interface. Here’s what I discovered.