Hey good stuff... glad to see someone going against the flow! Haha, actually I agree, I really don't enjoy using Gmail much at all. The spam filtering is great, as are the services you can access with it, but the actual mail client I never use unless I have to.
To be honest I really like Windows Live Mail. I like the interface and it has all the features I need.
You nailed it with this article. I couldn't agree more with some of your points. You managed to be positive about the future of blogging without resorting to lamenting about the good old blogging days and the decline of the web etc etc... something I'm seeing a lot of lately..
I am pretty new to blogging myself, and for a while most of the websites in my FeedDemon where those 'a-listers'. However it didn't take long before I began to grow bored. I really didn't care about seeing half a dozen blog echoing the latest firefox news.
Anyways now I have discovered greater bloggers such as yourself, Louise Gray etc.