Offline GMail ready for public consumption, exits Labs

I'm so rarely without an internet connection these days that I barely give a second thought to offline access to my GMail, but it's a welcome "in case of emergency" feature. It's been available in GMail Labs for a long time, but today Google has pushed Offline Mail to full-fledged GMail option status.

As with other GMail feature rollouts, you might not see the change right away (not a big deal, since you can turn it on in Labs if you really want to anyway). Offline access is also a handy way to save on your 3G data access - on the bus and need to check an email but you don't want to waste precious airtime? Not a problem -- if you've got Offline Mail enabled. Just fire up GMail and poke around your inbox as you normally would.

Google recently beefed up Offline with two handy features - the ability to attach files while composing messages and an option to choose which messages are downloaded for offline access.

Check your settings page and look for the Offline tab - if it's there, you're good to go. If not, well, wait a few more hours and try again. While you wait, you can always watch Captain Kirk make love to the mountain after the break...