There are so many better choices.  Gmail is NOT the first free webmail service to offer IMAP.  That honor goes to AIM.com AFAIK.  They're had IMAP and POP3 for more than a year.

Hotmail: 5 gigs email, 1 gig skydrive

Yahoo: unlimited gigs email, briefcase, unlimited video storage on jumpcut

AIM.com: no evil privacy-raping-ad-software

Hiding some ads in gmail

IE7pro userscript to remove right-banner from gmail:

http://bluebrainspatter.googlepages.com/my-Gmail-no-ads-inRead.ieuser.js

SkyDrive mirror

Firefox

IE is ok sometimes... but I mostly use Firefox... you should too

AdBlock Plus
AdBlock Element Hiding Helper
NoScript
GreaseMonkey
Remove it permanently
platypus
CoScript
Stylish

soo many awesome extensions!

Proxomitron

really take back the web... thank God for Scott Lemon!