There are many reasons why Gmail is the best free email service on the Internet, but I'll save my diatribe about that for another day. If you were already thinking of switching to Google's email, they've just rolled out a new feature that automatically imports all your mail and contacts from your old email account — be it Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, and more, into your spankin' new Gmail account, no complicated extra steps necessary.

They're even letting you forward your old mail into your new Gmail account for 30 days, so you can test out Gmail and start replying to those emails with your new address.

I have a couple of friends who I've been trying to convert to Gmail for years, and this news renders their excuses totally invalid.