Everyone to their own I suppose.
The main issue I have with gmail and others of that ilk is that your emails are not private (OK, only computers scanning for linkwords, but non private anyway because of that), and I think the lack of being able to send some types of attachments. My emails system revolves around being able to send and receive attachments, as a few of you have already found out.
I am a member of a site that used to use a linkword system, for advertising purposes, and it almost collapsed, until they very quickly got rid of it. The members just didn't 'trust' it, and the postings just dropped to nearly zero. There is just too much 'spying' and lack of trust going on at the moment.
I am under the illusion of you get nothing for nothing, and if it is 'free', they are giving away millions for nothing, and I don't think Google is a charity, they are making money on it somehow. It is what they get out of your emails that concerns me. If they can scan for links and keywords, they can scan for other things as well, and they don't even have to tell you about it.
I think I will stick with my 'secure' system for now, thanks anyway. It costs me 2 squid a month for what I have, plus I can have five separate email addresses. Plus I have just found out that I actually have 1gb of storage, not 500mb as previously stated. So to me that is value for money and peace of mind for what I want to do.
John