For those of us who can’t get enough of our 2 GB no 3 GB no wait, now 4+ Gigs of free Ad-supported Gmail goodness, Google upped the ante on Wednesday by enabling FREE IMAP access (finally) for all accounts to the delight of many. A fair amount has already been covered on this topic (Gmail Blog, ArsTechnica, Engadget, 5ThirtyOne) (the web works fast), but I hope to offer some additional insight.

What’s the big deal?

A few months ago I started using Mail.app again as my primary email client. For the longest time I had stuck with the web based Gmail interface but for various reasons (spotlight search in the OS, Quicksilver integration, picking up a shiny new iPhone, etc.) I moved to using a client most of the time and accessing mail via POP. My setup was simple… access mail at home on my iMac, out and about on my iPhone, and when traveling on my Powerbook all via the native Mail.app application.
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