"Years" is an exageration, but not by much! Gmail has been in beta going on 15 months. I mentioned a while back that I was moving from Mailblocks to Gmail, and promised to let you know what I thought of it, so here goes.
Changing email programs isn't always easy. Because you use email day in and day out, a certain amount of muscle memory develops, and even if the new service/software is better, it takes some re-training. Switching to Gmail was a fairly easy change, as changes go, with a couple of things requiring some adjustment.
For one thing, Gmail doesn't offer the traditional folder set up where you create folders and move your email into those folders in order to keep them organized. Instead, you have "labels", which serve pretty much the same purpose with the added advantage of being able to put more than one label on an email. Of course, I'd heard about this and understood it, but still felt a little disoriented for a few minutes.
One of Gmail's best features can also be a tad confusing, that is, it groups emails and their responses together, so that the entire thread is in one place. You can open the thread and see the full-text of all the emails in that thread, or just click on the one you want to read. New messages are automatically expanded. Just be careful...if there's more than one new email in a thread, it can be easy to miss, though Gmail shows you the author of the new message, with a downward arrow pointing you to the right direction. Again, this just takes a little getting used to. But being able to see the complete thread has WAY more advantages than disadvantages.
There are a few small Gmail behaviors that I'd like to adjust. Most functions are 2 clicks away. For example, I'd like message options such as "trash", "reply" and "reply to all" to automatically display. Right now I have to click "more options" to see these frequently used commands, or use the drop-down menu, which also requires 2 clicks. I couldn't spot any configuration option set "unhide" as the default, but I was unsuccessful. I'd also like Gmail to automatically move to the next message when I trash one, but no such luck; gain, two clicks are necessary.
I almost forgot about the ads, because they're so inconspicuous, they're easy to overlook, unlike's Yahoo's ads, which are REALLY in your face. Gmail's ads are contextual. Gmail's computers scan your email messages for key words and deliver ads based on those keywords as you browse your email. The ads are strictly text, and take up very little space on the screen. And as long as it's just computers reading my email, I'm okay with it. A more significant concern is the housing of your entire collection of email on a remote server. I download saved messages regularly so I have copies on my own computer, but others might be worried about all that information living elsewhere.
So those are my minor quibbles. All in all, Gmail is bare bones, and there are advantages to that, though I do miss some of the bells and whistles of Yahoo email, like the ability to regularly sync your address book and collect POP email from other accounts. But I suppose that's part of its charm, kinda like the Google search box, simple and clean. It does the job.
I suppose my biggest complaint is that I can't seem to get it to work on my Blackberry. But then, there's lots of web sites that don't work on my Blackberry. However, I must say that Yahoo mail works fine.
Most importantly, I now have 2 gigs, yes, that's 2 gigs of email storage. (My Mailblocks account gave me 15 meg.) I can attach numerous photos to my emails without a care in the world. If I want to backup a small file, I can send it to Gmail. I can save emails that I have no inkling I'll ever need again. And I have the power of the Google search engine to search all that stuff.
For a recent review of Gmail, see PC Magazine, "Google's Gmail."
I agree with your complaints, hope they'll get fixed quickly. I think this is why Gmail is still in beta. Maybe I'll try sending an email to the Gmail Team, it worked last time (when I saw the text in Trash when emptied, was outdated). Not sure if it's because of my email the text got changed...