Yeah I know

[altivo]

You get what you pay for. Gmail is free.

It has also become a bloated monstrosity. The featuritis is taking the whole thing over to the extent that I think they are losing touch with the original purpose of e-mail.

The real aggravation though, is the fact that whenever they have a slowdown or outage, as they did today for a couple of hours (early morning here, mid-morning to noonish in EU) the error messages always try to put the blame on the user, the user's computer, or the user's ISP. "Your internet connection is too slow" or "This is taking longer than expected." I love to hate that last one. Whenever they drop some unannounced enhancement into place, their server grinds to a near halt and they pretend it's my computer that's too slow...

Of course, for those of us who use e-mail heavily, as I do, changing to another address or provider is not a happy thought. I also dislike POP mail systems that download the mail onto whatever PC I'm using at the moment. I use too many machines in different locations, and my mail would end up fractured halfway across the county. I also like being able to read my incoming mail on my cell phone, which I can do with Gmail but not with any of the other web-based e-mail systems as far as I can tell.

I like the user interface mostly, though I wish they'd let me hide or remove some of the unneeded features, such as chat.

Unlike some of my friends, I only lost access for a half hour to an hour, during part of which I was commuting to work. It has continued to be erratic and sluggish though, for most of the day.

Comments

[leopanthera.livejournal.com]

Fastmail. IMAP. Done.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I don't think IMAP does anything for me. Short of actually switching to it (which would require going to one of the higher paid levels to match the features I actually do use in Gmail) it's difficult to tell whether Fastmail would otherwise be any better. I suspect it won't work with my rather primitive cell phone, for instance.

[leopanthera.livejournal.com]

Well, if you phone is very old, they have a WAP interface at http://wap.fastmail.fm/

But most phones should be able to connect directly to the IMAP server.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

WAP is indeed all this phone does. It's a $29. cheapie from Kyocera, and for as much as I use a cell phone, it's all I want.

[kint.livejournal.com]

You can at least turn chat off, though I'm not sure about hiding that toolbar.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You can turn it off in the sense that it doesn't automatically sign you onto chat every time to connect to the web server, but you can't turn chat off to the extent that all those time wasting scripts don't get downloaded and activated, wasting everyone's time including their own. I'm not going to use their chat system, and there's no point in having all its scripts downloaded and some sort of tentative connection made every time I log in. That's what happens though.

[kint.livejournal.com]

Ahh, I gotcha, that makes good sense (I'm pretty capable of using computers, just not very aware of what's going on underneath).

I do see a little option at the top for 'older version.' Is that any better?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Only helps if I go all the way back to the no-script, pure html version. That's too primitive, and wipes out the features I do use along with the ones I don't care about.

Part of the issue is the fact that we have no broadband capability at the farm, so waste that doesn't bother folks with cable or DSL is painfully apparent here.

[leopanthera.livejournal.com]

If you're on a modem, it's insane to be doing mail through the web at all.

Use IMAP, or even POP3 if you have to. Both have been around for much longer than broadband has.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I just have to disagree with that. IMAP and POP are not good tools for the way I use e-mail, because I don't carry a laptop around. I've used web-based e-mail tools exclusively for my personal e-mail for probably seven or eight years now, and there's no problem with dialup. Or at least, there hasn't been, except since Gmail caught this featuritis bug. Most of them are a bit slow to connect, but then work fine once you're logged in. Gmail seems to have a huge volume of scripting, and they insist on downloading it all anew every session rather than letting it be cached. Then they set all sorts of timers and bitch and moan if it isn't going fast enough, which is just plain stupid.

[silver-kiden.livejournal.com]

use yahoo mail. still free, not bogged down with crap, you can check it from your phone, and you can set up your gmail to forward everything to your yahoo.

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

Yahoo is "free*" inside those quotes with the asterisk and all that. I still haven't convinced people to stop mailing me at my Yahoo ID (which I don't manually check), and if I want to forward or POP email to my GMail account, I have to pay.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

…not bogged down with crap…

The "THIS MESSAGE SENT THROUGH YAHOO" banner on all the mail you send through it would beg to differ.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I have a hundred reasons for hating Yahoo, many of which predate their e-mail system. I have two Yahoo accounts anyway, but don't use either of them for e-mail and never will. Any provider that tacks advertisements onto the outgoing mail in order to force them on the recipient isn't going to be getting my business, free or not.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Yahoo accounts? Ooh, please share! :) (in a message if you wish)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The only reason I have Yahoo accounts is to get at some Yahoo groups, and even those have mostly broken down to where I don't read them any more. The only ones I pay attention to are amateur radio related.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. Okay then :)

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

You're not likely to want to pay for 99.9% uptime (especially anywhere else), and GMail hasn't been down for .1% of the past year yet.

I think the complaint about Google is because they're successful and visible.

I haven't ever had a mail provider that's had the uptime that Google has. Even when I was running it myself, especially not when I was accepting SMTP over ISDN. How quickly we forget the days when it might take a whole day for an email message to get through.

Heck, a lot of people don't have a 99.9% reliable computer to get the mail with.

That said, I love GMail.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh I agree. It's not the occasional downtime that bothers me. This is really a rant about their featuritis and the fact that they don't give users any way to avoid downloading scripting for unused features every single time they connect.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

At least it works. Hotmail seems to love to add new features and makeovers that renders the site unusable on browsers other than FF and IE. And I have no plans to switch.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, Microsoft owns Hotmail now, so I'm surprised they haven't locked out Firefox as well.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

Annoying the downtime as it was, I don't think I can moan about GMail's uptime record. That said, I AM getting annoyed with feature creep. I believe in the philosophy of "do one thing, and do it well."

If I wanted a personal organiser, I'd go out and buy one.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Or at least select only the bits you wanted. Exactly. If they just put links on the screen for stuff you could pop open in separate windows or tabs, it would be fine. Loading it all "just in case" is stupid and causes overload on their servers and bandwidth. They just don't seem to get that.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Chat can be removed from the UI, actually. I'm not quite sure how (and I'm too tired/distracted to check much), but I did it, somehow. o.o

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Completely removed? So it doesn't even have a button any more? That would make a big difference if it's true. I'll have to look into that. If I want an IM client, I'll load one. I don't want theirs in any case. Even Meebo is better.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's completely gone, as far as I can tell - at least the UI part. I still see Firefox connecting to "chatenabled.google.com" occasionally, but that could be taken care of with AdBlock, too.

I just checked, BTW, and the "Better GMail" Firefox extension also has an option to get rid of the chat box entirely - but I haven't got that enabled, so it's got to be something else, somewhere. Maybe it's because I have "Never save chat history" set under Settings->Chat; either that, or it's the "Muzzle" lab tool ("Conserves screen real estate by hiding your friends' status messages.")

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I already have chat as restricted as they let you go with the normal settings, so that's not it. I hadn't thought of using AdBlock to block chatenabled.google.com, but I suspect that would just bring up those complaints about "Unable to load some Gmail features due to a problem with your internet connection" which is one of my big complaints about Gmail. It works fine for weeks, and then they change something and for two or three weeks I have to put up with constant complaints from them that "there's something wrong with your connection" even though there's nothing wrong and everything works as it should. It has to be chat or some other feature that I never use that's causing those stupid popups.

I'll have a look at the "Better Gmail" plug-in. I've seen it before but always assumed it was just going to add even more features I don't want.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

It might cause messages like that, yes - I'm really not sure how AdBlock interacts with GMail. Checking mine, it does seem that three pieces of GMail are blocked by my rules without there being any complaints, but it's nothing crucial.

The extension is useful, though - I only use a few of its features, but "Add Row Highlights", "Attachment Icons" and "Hide Invites Box", for example, are nice. *s*

I'd also give the "Muzzle" labs feature a try.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Muzzle was already turned on, but makes no difference.

"Better Gmail" doesn't work with the current user interface, according to its own description.

"Better Gmail 2" which was supposed to work with the current design has a report on it that says it quit working the last week in January due to changes made by Google.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Right, Better Gmail 2 is what I meant, of course.

Those parts of it I use *do* work for me, too - I can't speak for all features, but I haven't run into any problems and wasn't even aware it's supposed to be not working. Seems like my copy didn't get that memo. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

OK, installed "Better Gmail 2" in spite of warning that it "doesn't work." You're right. It seems to work. Got rid of the invitations box and the chat box completely. I'll have to see what else it can do. I did try blocking "chatenabled.google.com" in AdBlock Plus but it made no visible difference.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Cool, good to hear it's working for you as well. ^^

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I must say I've been with Yahoo mail since 1997 now without adding any of the other things you can and it's been really good :) Yahoo tends to limit those extras to "My Yahoo"

[altivo.livejournal.com]

But Yahoo sticks advertisements on the end of your outgoing mail. I find that unacceptable. They also were one of the early adopters of the "hidden" spam permissions, where they automatically sign you up for all kinds of junk mail without asking for your permission. Last time I checked, they were still doing that to anyone who creates a new account. You can turn it off, but you have to know how to find it in their preferences. There are two separate locations that need to be set, and every now and then they seem to turn them back on without telling you too. That's pretty despicable.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Really? I knew about the add on bits, but I've never had them turn back on.

Why not?

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

You get what you pay for. Gmail is free.

It has also become a bloated monstrosity. The featuritis is taking the whole thing over to the extent that I think they are losing touch with the original purpose of e-mail.

Why not, we've lost touch with the purpose of cellphones- turning mainly into games and miniature televisions/computers >_> Excess always leads to disconnecting with reality.

Re: Why not?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, people seem to fall for that crap. They're still using Windows and Microsoft Office, after all.

[dragon-moon.livejournal.com]

Ah, was that the problem this morning? I was worried because gmail went down, but LJ & facebook also seemed to be loading extremely slow earlier.

Totally agree on wishing they'd let you totally hide or remove the stuff you never use. :o)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

See the thread with schnee above. If you are using Firefox, you can install the "Better GMail 2" add-on. It has options to remove things like the chat window and the invitations window. I can't tell yet whether it loads faster, but at least it gets rid of the unwanted clutter.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, regarding the downtime: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/update-on-todays-gmail-outage.html

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I think they underplay the overall impact. I noticed problems at 5:30 am local time, and the service was still misbehaving after 9:00 am when I was at work and on a T-1 connection.

My objection was not so much to the outage, because we all know those things happen and it's true, they don't have them nearly as often as some other services (including LJ, for that matter, let alone FA.) What I find objectionable is the wording of their error messages, which are presumably generated out of the huge quantity of scripts they download to your machine when you connect. The wording always tries to make it your fault, as the end user. Your computer is too slow, your connection is defective, you're obviously too stupid to know what you're doing. When in fact, the truth is usually, their server is overloaded, and their code is so inefficiently designed that it contributes to that overload by eating up bandwidth all over the place.

[ceralor.livejournal.com]

I actually thought the same, but looking at it from a coding standpoint, it's often the browser at fault, not Gmail itself. Gmail is written now as if it were a desktop app, with multiple processes occuring at once. The problem is, most browsers treat javascript in a horribly mangled linear fashion.

I installed Chrome on my system the other day for kicks, and actually started liking it, and I was confused at how fast it ran Gmail and other apps compared to, say, Opera or Firefox.

I actually found a 'comic', more like illustrated explanation, of how Chrome works. It splits up the tasks into separate threads, modernizing the browser instead of single-threading the entire browser or even tabs. So each tab is a separate process, not just each window. It's actually one of those "God, why didn't anyone else think of this before!?" concepts when I read over it. I think if I were a browser dev, I'd be facepalming at my own stupidity when reading it. Sure it uses extra resources initially, because it's modernized, but most computers anymore to be honest can handle it without a single problem.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Older browsers single thread. I don't think any of the tabbed browsers do that, not even (ugh) IE.

I'd expect Chrome to run Gmail. After all, they had an inside line on optimizing for their own systems. Unfortunately, no Chrome for Linux last time I checked.

Actually, my biggest gripe with Gmail is their error messages and their internal timers. Yes, I use dialup. Yes, it takes longer. I know that. I expect it to take longer. Their scripts are written to start complaining too soon, and to do it with very unuseful comments like "This is taking too long." According to government statistics, 40% of homes in the US still have no broadband options available, and 50% still have no broadband connection. Writing net software that automatically expects everyone to have cable modem or better is just stupid.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

My son used to use Gmail but now has switched to
yahoomail.

Also free, but, according to him, better.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Just say no the Yahoo, the inventors of spam marketing, and sticking ads on the end of every e-mail you send. I think not.