Great to hear that it works for you, I’ll admit I’m not making as much as I should of my Google account, but it is working OK. In part I think this is because I’ve been with my employer for so long that the distinction between my personal and professional is so blurred anyway that for now it doesn’t matter.

I’ve went though the digital refactoring exersize a year ago, and I’m in the process of doing it again. The best solution i found for email is Google apps for your domain. I was running my own mail server for my personal domains and the upkeep of just the spam filtering was overwhelming me, then I had to move house and the server was going to be turned off anyway.

With google managing it, I see no more spam. I have no more availability problems and it just works. I can also have multiple domains and forward them anyway I like.

The best bit, is I’ve managed to free myself from Outlook, the web experience is easier than dealing with a massive PST file. I’m also using a blackberry and it works great with that, by setting up rules I only see on the handheld the things I want. Google have released a calendar sync tool for the berry, so my online calendar is in sync too.
When I’m at work, I can get to my personal mail without having to mess around with anything, and I can move between computers easily.

Sounds a bit gushy doesn’t it ? I know a lot of people fear the Google, but to be honest the slight privacy implications are far outweighed by the convenience of this solution… for me anyway.

For those that have got an e-mail address they want to wean themselves off, say an ISP one or sexy-thing@hotmail.com which is no longer appropriate now you are older than 16, here’s what to do.

a) Get a new address — do. it. now.
b) Forward the old one to the new one.
c) Tell everyone you have a new one. Only use it in correspondence from now on.
d) Delete the old one in a years time. You should find no-one is using it any more.

Some mail clients will display something like “sent by mail@binaryplex.com from tjb6454@gmail.com“, but for my personal mail, I don’t see this as a big issue.