iPad Gmail v. iPad Email

A new post announces a minor upgrade in Gmail for iPad:

More room to compose messages in Gmail on the iPad - Official Gmail Blog

This enhancement doesn't work yet for us. We need to refresh our screen to see the larger email compose area that is supposed to appear now in Gmail for iPad.

Update: Works great today (Wed.)! Nice enhancement.

We find ourselves going back and forth between the Gmail access via Safari and the native iPad email program. The latter renders the graphics in an email much better than the Gmail interface. It only takes a minute to set up the iPad email program to access your Gmail account.

The drawback to using the iPad email is that you lose out on the Gmail threading. Once you have gotten used to that -- and it does take some time -- threading becomes a way of life. The Gmail interface also has a direct Archive button. To achieve that in the iPad email, you need to move you message to the All Mail mailbox. Some people complain about the sound effects and graphics of the iPad email application. So far we like that.

It's a tossup with an edge to the iPad program because we do get a lot of formatted emails and we cannot tolerate the ugly way they appear in the Gmail Safari interface.