Hi, thanks for your reply. AFAIK, you don't need a google apps account to use your own email address. When creating a new account, the email field of the form defaults to @gmail.com grayed out but there is a link below it "I prefer to use my current email address" that let's you put in your own domain address (non gmail). That's what I had done, I don't have a google apps account.
In any event I went ahead and set up a gmail account. The latest Android version (4.4.2) or thereabouts messed up my text messaging app (as in it no longer worked) so I switched over to Google Voice for texting and their app. Installed almost instantly per the gmail account/address.
And then the same for Drive. Google's GV app is pretty good, puts a phone receiver icon in my N7 notifications area when there's a new txt message and I use a fun ringtones app (Nexus7 Ringtones) to have its own ringtone (I have Google Voice set up to forward the txt message to my email, from where I can also reply to it, and that's the ringtone choice I hear).
So with some extra fiddling around I got things set up ok albeit with a gmail account instead of my own domain address but that will be ok too since it's personal stuff rather than business (which does use my own domain). Might even work out for the better in the long run to differentiate the two.
Thanks,
Bob