Google Gears finally got really useful for me. With flaky 3G coverage and to be honest a dodgy BT Homehub connection to boot being able to get at my email in an offline fashion has always been handy. But being a Google Mail convert for many years has meant the only real option to date was to use an imap or pop client.

But today my Google Labs page had the recently launched Offline GMail option front and centre.

Right now it’s up to about 2,300 emails downloaded and setup is about as easy as it gets.

Another nicety with Gears (well Gmail and Docs) are the quick and easy desktop icons. Now getting GMail up is even easier.

I suspect I’ll probably still pull everything down into say Outlook to archive stuff off locally (just in case) but for day to day operations Gears should keep me very happy indeed.