Gmail: Snail Mail?

Using Gmail has been an excruciating experience these past two weeks.

Consider these approximate loading times I’ve observed:

Loading Gmail itself - 30 seconds
Sending mail w/o attachment - 1 minute
Opening a ‘folder’ (Spam, Inbox, Sent Mail, etc.) - 30 seconds
Opening/archiving/deleting a message - 30 secs

Anybody having a similar experience? I’m using BayanTel DSL’s 768 kbps plan, and more often than not I’m cruising at higher speeds thanks to their free speed-on-demand feature from 10pm to 10am.

As you might imagine, being unable to reply fast to emails is frustrating when you receive scores of them every day. Sometimes, refreshing the page and re-clicking on links do the trick. Sometimes. And when I do get fed up, I close all Firefox tabs and restart the browser…then Gmail becomes faster. A bit.

Don’t get me wrong — I love Gmail. I’d pick it over Yahoo! Mail Beta (another turtle) on any given day. Gmail has become the ‘nerve center’ of my home office communications, and as such, I just want my fast Gmail back!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 3:05 am and is filed under Web/Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Gmail: Snail Mail?”

ia Says:
May 3rd, 2007 at 5:21 am
bah. gmail is one of those things on the net that do not act according to your supposed internet speed. on bad days, at least. tgfg (thank goodness for gmail) still!
nightfox Says:
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:28 pm
hmm, we’re running on Bayantel DSL’s __ Plan but at times when there are noticeable slowdowns, we tend to reset the port instead (thru the hotline). Well, there was really an instance where GMail didn’t load at all but actually it’s just the fault of the bandwidth. (they had broken links some X weeks ago but i think it was already fixed).
Ederic Says:
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Medyo nagbabagal nga, kahit sa office. Pero love ko pa rin ang GMail.
Garro Says:
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:03 pm
gmail is the only website I’ve seen with a blank “loading” screen. what’s up with that?

I’m on Yahoo classic mail. It’s gotten the job done all these years, that’s why I’ve never found a need to change it.
shien Says:
May 5th, 2007 at 12:32 am
I’ve also been checking out gmail and everytime I try to log in/log out, server goes down. Or timed out. Or whatever. You have to click on refresh.
Corsarius Says:
May 7th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Ia, TGFG…I’ll remember this one. Yes, Gmail is still the best mail client out there IMO, which says much about the competition.

Nightfox, hmmm. That’s food for thought, thanks. I’ll try to check up on BayanTel the next time Gmail goes isneeeyl.

Ederic, ako din. Pero mas love ko ‘to kung mas mabilis

Garro, honestly, I now find the classic Yahoo to be a bit tedious. Gmail won me over because it was intuitive

Shien, got the same experiences. Hopefully our sufferings will disappear soon…care for some new servers, Google?
LIRA Poetry Workshop » Slip of the Pen Says:
May 25th, 2007 at 2:14 am
[...] Last night, my snail mail Gmail was the harbinger of good news — I’ve been accepted into this year’s Filipino poetry workshop held by the Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika, at Anyo, more popularly known as LIRA. [...]