Many of you might be unaware of this. This is a new feature  which lets you use Gmail offline! This is a very good solution to the crappy, unreliable internet connection. It downloads all your messages and whenever you have your internet connection back, it synchronizes  your offline database with the latest messages.

Just go to Settings –> Labs tab–> Offline.

If you have loads of email but no time / need to download it, just change the recent message range.