So Google released a handy tool that notifies you when you have Gmail, without having to login manually, its called Gmail Notifer (http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/). I use a Mac, so for us Apple users, we were out of luck. Now there is a solution for Apple Macintosh users, actually two options.

The two options I am aware of are:
GmailStatus 0.9 (http://homepage.mac.com/carsten.guenther/GmailStatus/) which is free. It basically adds a little menu item to the finder menu at the top. Here is a screen capture of what it looks like.

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/gmailstatus.gif

gCount v0.4 (http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~natan/gcount/) which free as well and looks to have a nicer interface. Here are screen captures from the Web site.

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/gcount-screen1.jpg

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/gcount-screen2.jpg

reused from my blog posting (http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/001009.html)