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The author is furious about a technology that was not designed for instantaneous delivery (SMTP) and fumes about it, because it isn't instantaneous. What's wor

by neya 14y ago

The author is furious about a technology that was not designed for instantaneous delivery (SMTP) and fumes about it, because it isn't instantaneous. What's worse is, he quickly assumes goes into some kind of 'super-hero mode' and makes a pretty heavy claim that this is Gmail's second biggest problem. I think this is the best approach - If someone hands over you a free glass of wine, which they've tried their level best to make it perfect, you just drink it instead of trying to suddenly become a food critic and blame the person who gave you the beer. If you don't like it, don't drink it. Buy your own beer from somewhere else. As simple as that! Tell you what, you should try Yahoo!, I bet.

afterburner 14y ago
Well, I'd at least complain that the wine somehow turned into beer...
monsterix 14y ago
No doubt SMTP is asynchronous, but a lag of 115 minutes? For a consumer that is way too high to live with, whatever say the standards. But obviously the title of the article and probably the topic borders on a flame-bait.
- bradleyjg 14y ago
  I guess you weren't around for FIDOnet. It could be days before you got an email. Plus we had to walk to school in the snow - uphill both ways.
brown9-2 14y ago
Isn't the 115 minute lag in the screenshot lag between one Google SMTP server and another Google SMTP server? That seems like a problem Google should be able to address.
- blablabla123 14y ago
  > That seems like a problem Google should be able to address. This is part of the problem. SMTP and the whole E-Mail thing is inherently unreliable and slow. Speaking for myself, but suspecting this is true for most heavy Gmail users, Gmail feels so good because it seems more reliable than using any other Web mail service. It is even more reliable when both ends use Gmail -- attachments are almost a non-issue within Gmail. Before Gmail mails could take ages to be delivered, get silently lost in spam filters/folders or did not arrive at all. When we ask Google to be more reliable in that part, we ask them to not do E-Mail but proprietary Magic-Gmail-Messaging. This is part of the problem, not the solution, this is why Facebook is doing E-Mail now. (Ironically FB Messaging seems in some way even less reliable than the Gmail Messaging.) BTW, what's up with this X.400 thing?
DrDreams 14y ago
No, the author is upset about "email with a 2 hour delivery lag." Try getting away with that lag at your job. There is no mention of "instantaneous" time scales in TFA.
nessus42 14y ago
> If someone hands over you a free glass of wine, which they've tried their level best to make it perfect, you just drink it instead of trying to suddenly become a food critic I think this is a bogus argument. If someone hands me a free glass of "wine" and it turns out to be undrinkable swill instead of wine, I'm pretty sure I would point this out. With regards to email, people expect email to be fast, and if your email servers routinely take a long time to make a delivery, you are not giving people what they would expect from your service, free or not. I say this as someone who was a sysadmin for a number of years and maintained email servers. If our email servers took two hours to deliver a piece of email, and it was the fault of our servers, I would have considered this to be an urgent issue to resolve. All this being said, I'm pretty happy with Gmail myself.
- neya 14y ago
  Can you please justify how Gmail, an Email client used by probably millions of users suddenly turns out 'un-drinkable' to the author (and to you)? Can you send E-mails? Yes. Can you receive E-mails? Yes. Can you forward E-mails? Yes. (^Note: This is a paid feature on other popular clients) Can you read all the E-mails you've sent and received? Yes. Are you paying for it? No. So, how does this become 'un-drinkable'? Your e-mail was delivered despite the delay. It would be fair to call it undrinkable if your email wasn't delivered. AFAIK No one promised you they would deliver it within 'x' minutes. For heaven's sake, it's a bug. People make mistakes, Softwares contain bugs, I'm sure with all your experience put together, you know this better than me. Why make such a huge fuss out of this? How does such a minor problem affecting only a fraction of Gmail users suddenly become Gmail's Second biggest problem?
  - blablabla123 14y ago
    > How does such a minor problem affecting only a fraction of Gmail users suddenly become Gmail's Second biggest problem? In my opinion the problem is this: the larger the mailbox or the more often you use Gmail, to higher are the odds of facing described problems. I.e. the heavy users have most problems. So there is the problem, it's just a matter of time until someone else solves it. When someone else solves it, it means those heavy users will migrate to this someone else. (Remember they were also the first who actually had any reasonable use-case in Gmail, that used to be advertised as Mailbox for messies/people with many mails.) The rest will just follow automatically, it's always like that. ;)

by neya 14y ago

afterburner 14y ago

Well, I'd at least complain that the wine somehow turned into beer...

monsterix 14y ago

No doubt SMTP is asynchronous, but a lag of 115 minutes? For a consumer that is way too high to live with, whatever say the standards. But obviously the title of the article and probably the topic borders on a flame-bait.

bradleyjg 14y ago
I guess you weren't around for FIDOnet. It could be days before you got an email. Plus we had to walk to school in the snow - uphill both ways.

brown9-2 14y ago

Isn't the 115 minute lag in the screenshot lag between one Google SMTP server and another Google SMTP server? That seems like a problem Google should be able to address.

blablabla123 14y ago
> That seems like a problem Google should be able to address. This is part of the problem. SMTP and the whole E-Mail thing is inherently unreliable and slow. Speaking for myself, but suspecting this is true for most heavy Gmail users, Gmail feels so good because it seems more reliable than using any other Web mail service. It is even more reliable when both ends use Gmail -- attachments are almost a non-issue within Gmail. Before Gmail mails could take ages to be delivered, get silently lost in spam filters/folders or did not arrive at all. When we ask Google to be more reliable in that part, we ask them to not do E-Mail but proprietary Magic-Gmail-Messaging. This is part of the problem, not the solution, this is why Facebook is doing E-Mail now. (Ironically FB Messaging seems in some way even less reliable than the Gmail Messaging.) BTW, what's up with this X.400 thing?

DrDreams 14y ago

No, the author is upset about "email with a 2 hour delivery lag." Try getting away with that lag at your job. There is no mention of "instantaneous" time scales in TFA.

nessus42 14y ago

> If someone hands over you a free glass of wine, which they've tried their level best to make it perfect, you just drink it instead of trying to suddenly become a food critic I think this is a bogus argument. If someone hands me a free glass of "wine" and it turns out to be undrinkable swill instead of wine, I'm pretty sure I would point this out. With regards to email, people expect email to be fast, and if your email servers routinely take a long time to make a delivery, you are not giving people what they would expect from your service, free or not. I say this as someone who was a sysadmin for a number of years and maintained email servers. If our email servers took two hours to deliver a piece of email, and it was the fault of our servers, I would have considered this to be an urgent issue to resolve. All this being said, I'm pretty happy with Gmail myself.

neya 14y ago
Can you please justify how Gmail, an Email client used by probably millions of users suddenly turns out 'un-drinkable' to the author (and to you)? Can you send E-mails? Yes. Can you receive E-mails? Yes. Can you forward E-mails? Yes. (^Note: This is a paid feature on other popular clients) Can you read all the E-mails you've sent and received? Yes. Are you paying for it? No. So, how does this become 'un-drinkable'? Your e-mail was delivered despite the delay. It would be fair to call it undrinkable if your email wasn't delivered. AFAIK No one promised you they would deliver it within 'x' minutes. For heaven's sake, it's a bug. People make mistakes, Softwares contain bugs, I'm sure with all your experience put together, you know this better than me. Why make such a huge fuss out of this? How does such a minor problem affecting only a fraction of Gmail users suddenly become Gmail's Second biggest problem?
- blablabla123 14y ago
  > How does such a minor problem affecting only a fraction of Gmail users suddenly become Gmail's Second biggest problem? In my opinion the problem is this: the larger the mailbox or the more often you use Gmail, to higher are the odds of facing described problems. I.e. the heavy users have most problems. So there is the problem, it's just a matter of time until someone else solves it. When someone else solves it, it means those heavy users will migrate to this someone else. (Remember they were also the first who actually had any reasonable use-case in Gmail, that used to be advertised as Mailbox for messies/people with many mails.) The rest will just follow automatically, it's always like that. ;)