GMail’s a superb tool – one that I shudder to think about living without – but it’s old. Since it emerged in 2004 it’s hardly changed at all, except for that constantly ticking maximum storage size (which is over 7GB now, I was surprised to see). Would a new feature every now and then kill Google?

To be fair, little tweaks do arrive every now and then. The SMS feature which has been gathering attention today, for example, but they’re often not enabled by default. Google keeps that BETA tag on the logo, though, so there’s really no reason for it to be squeamish about making updates.

If you’ve never tried, then you should dabble with some of these experimental features. Pop to your settings page from within GMail, then the Labs tab. Here you’ll find loads of interesting tweaks that you can turn on.

For example, as of this morning, I’ve seen profile pictures next to messages in the chat window. Brilliant. That’s enough to keep me happy for a day or two.

Quick Links, that’s another – bring up any window; a search for unread email (enter “is:unread” in the search box) or all emails from a colleague (enter “from:Bayon” in the search box) and then click on Add Quick Link, and you get a handy link for that search in the future. There’s a feature that should immediately be rolled-out to everyone. It’s saving me literally milliseconds a day.

There’s even one that will prompt you to add an attachment if you mention doing so in an email but forget. No more will you have to send embarrassing follow-up emails when you forget to drop that file in a message.

Don’t blame me if one of these untested features deletes all your email, though. It is Beta, after all.