Ever since Google first came out with Gears a couple years ago, we knew this day would come.  Now you can access your Gmail even when you’re not connected to the internet.

Users who want to try out the new offline Gmail can turn it on in the Gmail Labs experimental section in the upper right hand corner of the Gmail screen.  This feature works just as you would imagine.  All you email, every last kilobyte is downloaded to your hard drive so it came be accessed when offline.  Messages that you compose are saved and sent once you connect to the internet again.  There is even a “flaky connection mode”, for when your internet goes in and out, so you can continue working uninterrupted.  The other bright side to local storage of your emails is that it makes accessing old emails much faster.

This is a long-awaited feature for Gmail and could really change the way some people work.  Also, if you turn on offline Gmail and use Mozilla Prism, then you have yourself a desktop mail client that rivals the likes of Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird (for those of you wondering Google Calendar already has Gears support).

LINK to the Official Gmail Blog post.

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