gmail -slooooowwww work around

[jerrykr]

the search here does not seem to work for me, so if this has been posted before, sorry, just ignore.

I finally found out what has been causing my gmail to respond so slowly.

It seems Google has put up a new beta version of the software that has some real issues.

The "solution" is to run the older version instead. There is a link for "older version" to the right hand top of the page.

Trouble with that is, every time you sign in, you will be running the new version, the selection does not stick. Just selecting the old version is slooowww itself.

Saw a work around, go into Settings and for language, select "English UK", the old version then runs all the time (until Google decides to implement the new version for the UK folks, that is). Hopefully they will resolve their problem before then.

In Settings, I also turned off any services that I did not really need, like chat, and "show snippets", also set the page size to the smallest number of 25. Anything which requires server services that you don't need will reduce response time.

Hope this helps.

[rogerfsmith]

I'm running the Gmail Beta and it seems to me to be just as fast as the previous version. I have thousands of emails stored and typically have several hundred in my "in" box. So perhaps there is some other issue your are experiencing.
Cheers,
Roger

[crazeazn]

internet connection maybe? i'm not having any problems....

[jerrykr]

I did a bunch of googling today to find this info. Yes, I use Google extensively, and I am far from being a Google basher.

It seems that gmail has always had the "beta" tag in the header image, I know it still is there when I'm running the "old version".

The info I found also indicated that not all users were upgraded to 2.0 (I think that's the version it's at now). In any case no one was notified that they were in the select group to beta test this new ver.

I certainly do not disagree that I may have some settings on my OS and Browser that may not be friendly to the new version. But how would I know? and where would I look? My first thought was Spyware Blaster, but, I see no mention of it as a common thread.

My problems started about the same time many, many others have been reporting the same issues.

The problems are reported on XP, Vista, IE, Firefox, Linux, MAC. hmmm.

Consider yourself lucky, believe me you don't want to experience the very long response times, the loss of focus on the page, (you can't even minimize the page or kill the browser), and the browser crashes.

Search the web for "gmail slow" "gmail browser crash", you will see a bunch of discussion about this, and so far as I can find, nothing but this work around.

Regards,

[jeffreyluce]

I've been running the new version without any problems either.... it did nag me about having FireBug installed... I told Gmail to ignore it. I haven't noticed any performance issues tho.

Use FireFox (latest/greatest) on Windows 2003 Server - my work machine

[pippin]

running the new version also - no issues here. firefox and IE neither have issues.

[jerrykr]

glad to hear that you are not having any problems.

This article from Computer World.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9047498

afraid, I'm having the same.

This is reported all over Google's own Help, and as far as I can tell is being ignored.

John, everything else, including TPF is normal speed. Not my internet connection this time.

hope the work-around is not compromised, as I'm OK now since I made the changes I mentioned.

BTW: how can I find out which version of gmail I'm running? I cannot find anything in Help. The only difference that I see is, that the new version had a link to the old version in the top line of the display. I no longer see that, and it's back to being fast.

cheers.

[rogerfsmith]

Originally Posted by jerrykr

It seems that gmail has always had the "beta" tag in the header image, I know it still is there when I'm running the "old version".

You can tell if you have the new version by looking up at the top right hand of the browser window when you are logged in and you'll see



If you see the item I've circled, then you have the newer version. You can change back to the older version by clicking on the item I've circled.

I have several gmail accounts. I tested them on two different systems and connections and they both are very fast. I see no sign of slowdowns. By the way, I googled the word slowdowns along with the names of other emails programs, such as Outlook, Eudora, Hotmail, Yahoo, and found all sorts of pages on the slowdown subject for all of these. So I'm not sure a general search for gmail slowdowns means that much. The reality of the Internet is that you can have slowdowns of any service at times that effect one group, but not another. Its just part of the equation that is the Internet.

I did some tests just now on one of my accounts. I have some folders that have hundreds of emails in them, so I click on each of them to see how long it would take to display them. It was taking 1.25 seconds to display a folder of 100 items (I have the settings set to show 100 at a time). What's the speed that you're getting for a similar folder display?

Cheers,
Roger

Cheers,
Roger

[jerrykr]

I'm not even talking about the initial "Loading" wait while gmail displays the list of emails, but that is also very slow.

I'm mostly talking about simply selecting one email out of the list to read it, and they are very short messages without any attachments, 2 or 3 sentances.

Or, simply selecting an email from the list to delete it without even reading it.

I have not timed the slow responses, but they were in the multiple second catagory, and well into the frustration level area. the problem really gets bad when EVERY response is that slow, you just can't really do anything, and as I said, until Google's server return, you have lost focus on that page and can't do anything else on your computer. I suppose that if you had a small page size, other than full screen (which is how I like to read and work) you might be able to click on some other application and do something else while you are waiting. If you have sized the page to full, you are stuck waiting on the response. People describe it as losing control of the cursor, but it is actually waiting for the browser to get focus on the page.

re-read the very last paragraph on the second page of the Computer World link I posted. it's pretty wide-spread, and that sums up my personal experience.

I am really glad you are getting better responses.

Best,

[jon_k]

Originally Posted by jerrykr

It seems that gmail has always had the "beta" tag in the header image, I know it still is there when I'm running the "old version".

Yes they always have. I know a friend who works at Google, and he explains they do this for several of their products, and leave it in a perpetual beta stage for legal reasons. If they decided GMAIL isn't making enough money, they could shut the service down and wipe all your E-Mails in a matter of minutes. Nobody could complain, because its common knowledge a beta can be canceled at any time without prior notice. Therefore google is not obligated to provide support for a product, if they don't want to. They have no obligation to leave the service running a while if they want to shut it down.

The above is a worst case though. Mostly it's for problems like Jerry is having. They don't have to provide support to Jerry if he started to seek it from Google, since after all the product is a beta and betas have no support. It's simply a way to shed some responsibility from a product. They can claim it is in development when it's really in production and avoid legal issues that might crop up if a mistake happens.

This would also be handy if there was a catastrophic disk failure and millions of E-mail messages were lost. "Oops, it's still in beta."

The service is pretty reliable, but it's in beta "just in case"
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As for slowness, they have implemented a lot of new javascript in the new interface (more so then the old one) Slower computers would have trouble I imagine. I've got a PC at work thats merely a 1.3ghz, Celeron though and no issues.