I connect with gmail all the time.
Here is a sample of my email config file:
PHP Code:
$config['useragent'] = 'CodeIgniter';
$config['protocol'] = 'smtp';
$config['smtp_host'] = 'ssl://smtp.googlemail.com';
$config['smtp_user'] = '*****@*****.co.uk';
$config['smtp_pass'] = '************';
$config['smtp_port'] = 465;
$config['smtp_timeout'] = 5;
$config['wordwrap'] = TRUE;
$config['wrapchars'] = 76;
$config['mailtype'] = 'html';
$config['charset'] = 'utf-8';
$config['validate'] = FALSE;
$config['priority'] = 3;
$config['crlf'] = "\r\n";
$config['newline'] = "\r\n";
$config['bcc_batch_mode'] = FALSE;
$config['bcc_batch_size'] = 200;
Never had any problems (except gmail will not let me use an alias to an account - which was a pain when I discovered that).
Perhaps that will help,
Paul.