Google - on the verge of being really useful

I have a problem. On semi-regular trips abroad I am struggling to find an effective way of catching up on emails. I hate carting a heavy laptop around and so a PDA/phone seemed the answer. A Sony Ericsson P910i does the job with one drawback – it doesn’t have any spam filters and over a 24 hour period I can collect upwards of 200 messages – 95% of which are spam.

It seems that within the last 6 months spam has really blossomed and unfortunately my primary addresses have been hawked to all the least disreputable sources – a throwback to when the email address was clearly displayed on our website.

The answer seemed to be offered by the effervescent Google through their Google Gmail package, with its built in spam filters. All looked fine on setup and between desktop and mobile perfect synchronisation. But the forwarding of email from a POP server to Gmail is on limited availability. Other email forwarding options exist but seem to necessitate the forwarding computer being left on – not an ideal option when one is away for a week or so.

Please Google – you promise on your site to roll this Outlook collection option to Gmail in new future. You have a great opportunity to promote your use to a audience beyond search. I, and I am sure others really need this option and would be happy to pay for it.