I do agree that gmail shows that google has put brains into the user interface - it is by the way one cool dhtml-application (when I thought that dhtml is dead).

they have put a lot of effort in transforming webmail into some-kind of email-client, you have to learn some ways of using it (it's not "folders" it's "labels"), but learning is not really hard.

some things are largely improved compared e.g. to outlook (think of the auto-complete of adresses).

is it allowed to say: gmail is client software that comes from a server?