Thanks for the quick and thorough response! Couple of questions --

When I send an email to myphone#@vtext.com, I get the message in 2-3 seconds. Do you use this solution yourself? Can you time how fast the time you send a message to gmail to the time you're seeing it on your phone and let me know? Every second counts in this case. Unfortunately, the sender can only send the message to one email address, so I can't speed it up that way. If the phone is always "on-line" would it retrieve the message faster?

Is there an option to have the message automatically appear on the screen as soon as it is available?

Is there an option to let sms go through to alert me to the incoming email?

What do you mean by "use "recentxx@gmail.com", not just "xxx@gmail.com"."?

Do you know if I could use yahoo instead of gmail for this?

Just curious...do you know if a Blackberry deliver this message to me faster? I would hate to switch, but this use it critical to me.
Thanks again,