There are a lot of things I like about Gmail, one of which is that it's very accessible from different systems, whether you prefer to subscribe to your Gmail inbox through your favorite RSS reader or whether you want to just integrate your Gmail messages into your regular mailbox by accessing it using the POP (post office protocol) system. Having it available doesn't mean it's easy to use, however, so let's step through configuring POP access for Gmail.

The first step is to log in to your Gmail account and click on Settings, then Forwarding and POP. You'll see this:

Your first decision will be whether you want to access all of your old mail (which might be quite a few hundred - or thousand - messages) or whether you want to just see messages arriving from now on in your existing email program. I'll opt for the latter since I don't want to be overwhelmed.

You can also specify what happens in Gmail once a message is accessed via POP. You can have messages moved to the trash, archived, or kept in your Inbox as if they'd never been touched. I automatically archive messages so I have a backup copy. Easily done!

Before you click on the Configuration Instructions link, make sure you've saved your changes: I imagine it's a common mistake to get sidetracked at this point in the configuration process.

Gmail has POP configuration instructions for a wide variety of different email programs, including:

• Outlook Express and Outlook 2002 (and older) (Windows)
• Outlook Express and Outlook 2002 (and older) (Mac)
• Outlook 2003 Entourage 2004
• Entourage X
• Eudora 5.1 (and higher) (Sponsored & Paid Mode)
• Eudora 5.1 (and higher) (Light Mode)
• Netscape Mail 7.x
• Netscape Mail 6.2
• Netscape Mail 4.5, 4.6, or 4.7
• Apple Mail
• Mozilla 1.7
• Thunderbird 0.x
• BlackBerry Internet Service

Choose Outlook Express for Windows and you'll see extensive and well-documented instructions that you should follow.

I've tested this myself and had it work fine. The two critical things to notice is that you must specify connecting via SSL and that you also must override the default SMTP port for outbound email and change it from port 25 to port 587, as detailed in the configuration information.

That should get you going. If you're still having problems, I'll encourage you to print out the Gmail instructions, then check off on the paper each and every line as you confirm you've set it as specified.

Good luck!