You can configure Outlook to pull your email for a Gmail email address, but I experienced some slowness during the process. I found a blog that described a few things you can do to speed it up. http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/solutions-for-slow-gmail-imap-with-microsoft-outlook/1761/
A Day in the Life of a Presson…
Co-discover Interesting things :)
A Day in the Life of a Presson... 
I tried IMAP through Gmail using this informative blog entry: http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2006/04/how-to-use-gmail-over-imap
It has worked really well for me. No slowness issues.