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Damn. I loved the basic HTML feature in Gmail when logging in on a slow-as-shit 3G connection, or I was behind several proxies and latency was an issue. More en

Damn. I loved the basic HTML feature in Gmail when logging in on a slow-as-shit 3G connection, or I was behind several proxies and latency was an issue. More enshittification by Google.

voganmother42 3y ago
Agreed, it is/was far superior for poor connections
dewey 3y ago
Wouldn’t just pulling emails through IMAP / POP take even less bandwidth?
- lycos 3y ago
  Unrelated but made me think of this anecdote; Many years ago I met a tech-savy captain who did have satellite internet on his ship, but it was incredibly expensive (not sure about current pricing), so he only used it briefly every now and then. To receive e-mails (and some other things) he had a server somewhere which fetches everything and then zips it up as compressed as possible and when online synced it to a local computer/server that's onboard. It was pretty fun/interesting to see creative solutions like that to deal with very limited bandwidth in practice.
  - smitty1e 3y ago
    Some 20+ years ago I was a frigate Commo on the great circle route from Pearl Harbor to San Diego. We'd pull email down over Inmarsat, but the geometry was such that the ship literally had to come to a different course and speed to keep a lock on the bird. Physics matter sometimes.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - benguild 3y ago
    yeah, cruise ships with bad internet were a great use case for Basic HTML Gmail
- greggsy 3y ago
  Depends on your workflow. You might just mark everything as read, or archive them, rather than download and read them.
  - oniony 3y ago
    I believe IMAP lets you do that.
- noduerme 3y ago
  This is what I do, usually... I run my own mailserver, but I also have a gmail account, and I just use Thunderbird to connect to both... when I'm on desktop. I auto-download and auto-delete the mail from gmail server, in order to stay under their storage limit. But that can end up using quite a bit of bandwidth, and unexpected delays if some uncle sends me some giant mp4 cat video. The alternative would be having to periodically go in and download everything and clean out my gmail, which is just too irritating.

Damn. I loved the basic HTML feature in Gmail when logging in on a slow-as-shit 3G connection, or I was behind several proxies and latency was an issue. More enshittification by Google.

voganmother42 3y ago

Agreed, it is/was far superior for poor connections

dewey 3y ago

Wouldn’t just pulling emails through IMAP / POP take even less bandwidth?

lycos 3y ago
Unrelated but made me think of this anecdote; Many years ago I met a tech-savy captain who did have satellite internet on his ship, but it was incredibly expensive (not sure about current pricing), so he only used it briefly every now and then. To receive e-mails (and some other things) he had a server somewhere which fetches everything and then zips it up as compressed as possible and when online synced it to a local computer/server that's onboard. It was pretty fun/interesting to see creative solutions like that to deal with very limited bandwidth in practice.
- smitty1e 3y ago
  Some 20+ years ago I was a frigate Commo on the great circle route from Pearl Harbor to San Diego. We'd pull email down over Inmarsat, but the geometry was such that the ship literally had to come to a different course and speed to keep a lock on the bird. Physics matter sometimes.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- benguild 3y ago
  yeah, cruise ships with bad internet were a great use case for Basic HTML Gmail
greggsy 3y ago
Depends on your workflow. You might just mark everything as read, or archive them, rather than download and read them.
- oniony 3y ago
  I believe IMAP lets you do that.
noduerme 3y ago
This is what I do, usually... I run my own mailserver, but I also have a gmail account, and I just use Thunderbird to connect to both... when I'm on desktop. I auto-download and auto-delete the mail from gmail server, in order to stay under their storage limit. But that can end up using quite a bit of bandwidth, and unexpected delays if some uncle sends me some giant mp4 cat video. The alternative would be having to periodically go in and download everything and clean out my gmail, which is just too irritating.