After years of working from various premises, I recently found a simple way to keep an updated archive of correspondence and related information; it's simply Google's Gmail. All I do is BCC important messages to my Gmail account.

Apart for the 1 Gb available, Gmail's advantage is its use of "Labels" rather than folders to organise messages. Unlike folders, Labels can overlap, i.e. the same message can exist in multiple folders. In addition, labels can be automatically applied to incoming messages, according to specific rules.

alx

I've started doing the same with gmail.

My main email program is the emailer in Opera browser, which uses views instead of folders, and boasts the same advantage--being able to place the email in multiple categories.

I'm not sure the boast gets the distinction entirely right, however, and this may cause users to find the system confusing when it is actually simple. In fact, you can do the equivalent of views or labels with folders (that is, create clone equivalents). Windows after all allows what it calls shortcuts, and they can be to folders as well as files. And you can get additional control over the presentation with the free program Snap Folder 2005. So, from the user's perspective, what the big difference? It seems to be simple that there are easy ways to create multiple views or labels, but not shortcuts to folders. But that defect in folders can be cured with a more advanced send to functionality.

Stephen R. Diamond