Ever since I wiped my hard drive, I have not been able to get Gmail Notifier to work. No matter what I did, it wouldn't connect to my Gmail account. I had given up and installed the Notifier extension for Firefox, but it's really quite a lousy substitute for the Real Thing.
Tonight, I fixed it.
Without going into horrible mundane detail, Gmail Notifier is now working again. Something with "always using https" options or whatever in Gmail. I downloaded a patch and all is right with the world once again.