Mail Fetcher allows you to configure GMail to retrieve email from other mail accounts via POP3. When retrieved, external mail may be left on the server, automatically archived, or have a label applied. (The last option is a nice way to highlight non-GMail items in the inbox).

For those of us who love the GMail interface but would prefer to retain existing non-GMail address, this is a massive benefit. Until now I’ve been using server-side forwarding to, but this is a cumbersome solution beyond the capabilities of many people.

As far as I’m concerned  there’s only one remaining flaw in GMail: When using a non-GMail address for replies, GMail account details are still included. For example: If I wish to use ‘mail@andrewgrant.org’ for a reply-to address I must authenticate that I can receive email at that address. However, when composing email from that address my GMail account details are still contained in the ‘from’ field. Not only do programs such as Outlook display this in a strange manner (‘From xxxx@gmail.com on behalf of Andrew Grant (mail@andrewgrant.org)), but my GMail address and username is revealed to people from whom I may wish it to remain private.

This, in my opinion, is really sucky. While I suspect it may be the correct behavior with respect to some RFC, it’s certainly not the common-sense one. If I can prove I can receive email at a given address, then I should certainly be able to appear as a first-class citizen sending email from it.

Am I the only person who wants to use multiple addresses from one account?