I actually still POP my mail (if you can believe it), so I haven't yet adopted Gmail, but I feel the lure. If I want to share my archives across any of my machines, I have to constantly sync them, and I don't really have remote access to my mail, unless I leave it on the server for X days, and then I don't benefit from deep search. But I do get access to my mail and archives going back to 1998 while I'm offline, and that's definitely a plus.

I've been looking for a good, self-hosted version of Gmail that can replace my POP for a while, but the main reason why the lure of Google is so strong is convenience. And cost. And to some extent, reliability. Living a Google-free life is definitely doable but it can come at a cost (time, expense, convenience, functionality, reliability). That's the main tradeoff.