That’s interesting, I’ve had no problems with the built-in Android gmail client, in fact its phenomenal now that the new version has the “priority inbox” feature.

One thing I figured out that isn’t generally known. Any app that is pre-loaded in ROM on your phone won’t update when the version in the market updates. You must load the market version to your phone by hand, then it will auto-update. This applies to apps like GMail, GMaps, etc.