Reclaim your emails:
I am using gmail for 3 years until now, I am even poping other accounts inside gmail. It gave me consistent view to all my email. I also liked the conversation view very much. But wait, all my data is there, if my account is stolen, all my emails can be misused. I moved back again to read my email using Thunderbird.

1) I am poping all my emails and not leaving it on the server. I am using always my laptop so my data is always with me. Even if you read emails from several machines, you can make the master machine to remove emails from the server while other machines to leave emails on the server. This is not necessarily perfect as accessing it on the gmail, but my priority is to reclaim my data again.

Hundreds of megas and thousands of emails are poped from gmail, a lot of data that should be destructed as it is out of context, gmail wonder why I should every delete emails as I have more than 2 Giga of storage!

Another added benefit from reading my email to my laptop is the contribute ability I have with any open source project like Thunderbird, can you get this benefit from gmail?!

2) I feel a little safe from the risk of my emails gets compromised by security agents or hackers. I have no high security needs but I feel better with it.

Reclaim your Address Book:
I am convinced now to have separate two address books, the one that focused on voice conversations on my mobile and the other that focus on emails and web addresses on My Thunderbird Contacts. Each has its own objectives and limitation.

So now, I am happy I have reclaimed my emails and my address book, but I am making CD backup weekly to protect my data from a corrupted hard disk.