Color Me Happy: Gmail Adds Colored Labels
Gmail has added colored labels. Now, instead of just seeing the text of a label next to the subject, you’ll see the label in color (pictured). You can use either white text on the selected color or colored text on a lighter background of the same color. Strictly speaking, it’s just prettying up the UI, but still …
Now, what are the drawbacks? Well, you have to use the newer version of Gmail, as I said. You also have to use IE7 and Firefox 2.x, as well (I would hope you were already anyway).
Ugh, the drawback of using the newer version of Gmail. Ha, naturally it's expected, but there have been reports of slowdowns / crashes in the new version, which ironically was designed to improve performance.