This is another post about mail migration that is probably only of interest to Andy who happened to IM me today asking about it. I promise to bring more wonderful pictures of utterly boring things in Japan soon, but unfortunately I’m in one of my “must fix up my blog’s backend and reorganize all my computer files for no apparent reason” moods rather than the usual “go out and meet interesting people, take their picture, breath air and have a normal life.”

So anyway, I signed up for the Google Apps for Your Domain Beta which basically is a service where they will host your domain. You can then have Gmail, Googletalk, Calendar etc using your own domain. All for free!! I was mostly interested in Gmail without the @gmail.com address but using my own @q-taro.com instead. I signed up and then had to point my MX Settings (DNS for mail) to google. My provider Totalchoicehosting.com is totally cool and when I sent them the request, they responded within 5 minutes. The MX config change was done immediately. If you are looking for a good web hosting provider, they are tops!

I love Gmail more than sex (that’s a lie, but you get the idea) so I can’t describe how happy I am to be able to use Gmail with my own email addresss. It’s a dream come true!!

Then I had to figure out a way to move all my mail into the new account. Not that I need it but I like to have all my email archives in one place. I have managed to keep all my emails since 1993 and hopefully after this time I won’t have to think about it for a while.

So last night, I downloaded all my Gmail mail to Thunderbird (it took all night) and then this morning I used Mark Lyon’s GMail Loader to import all that mail to the new account. I used this freeware the first time I migrated all my mail to Gmail but that was almost 2 years ago and I only had about 7,000 or so mails. As everyone knows Gmail is more like a chat than mailer so you tend to write/send more mails of shorter length. In the 2 years I’ve been using it, I’ve accumulated a ton of mail. About 15,000+ mails. After downloading it all and then deleting all the crap I didn’t want, I proceeded to import it using the Gmail Loader. The freeware is set to send only 1 mail every 2 seconds to prevent flooding the smtp server. I started the process at 5am this morning, went to work, came back, and now 15 hours later it’s still not finished. It takes longer than 2 seconds for mails with large attachments which I have tons of. I’m sending all the mail to my inbox so as you can see (above) I already have almost 6,000 items. There’s actually way more than that. Those are unread items only and number of conversation threads, not individual mails. Also, with Google Apps you can change the Gmail logo to your own. Do you like my Doraemon gif?