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This article is misleading on several accounts (as others of its type often are). - Yes, initial payload size matters. But where's the true comparison about wh
by chavesn 13y ago
This article is misleading on several accounts (as others of its type often are).
- Yes, initial payload size matters. But where's the true comparison about what each app is loading? How are the features and the UX? Would a power user be satisfied with Fastmail (e.g. search, filters, etc.)? (It looks nice, but none of this was discussed at all).
- The disparate email count comparison is excused way too quickly. Have you done a similar test with a brand new Gmail account?
- Anecdata. I've never had the page load problems as bad as described. 2-3 seconds, and I reload once every week or less. "Sluggish" is a weasel word -- what is sluggish? Searches return in ~1 second for me (~7000 emails, I'm not a saver.)
- You can turn off chat.
- Switching is never as simple as described, and forwarding is a fairly messy solution (and will only get messy as the author creates new login accounts and further forks his usage).
- Ugh, the "Google suggest" argument. For the record, the only suggestion for Fastmail is "Why is Fastmail down"
I clicked on "Goodbye Gmail" hoping for some substance or an interesting story but instead got feelings, anecdata and glossing over the problems of a real migration or search for a qualified alternative.
- sliverstorm 13y agoAs a power user, I like my shell access to my mail machine. Procmail, shell scripts, perl... Oh, and GMail has definitely grown a lot more heavyweight. I've had to switch to the classic HTML interface to get anything done in GMail on my 3 watt 1GHz laptop. Turning off chat helped, but not nearly enough.
- sitharus 13y agoFrom a recent Gmail -> Fastmail switcher, who imported all emails from Gmail - Fastmail's UI is far faster to use, viewing emails is instantaneous, loading a folder with 30,000 emails takes a second at most. They have infinite scrolling with native scrollbars, and it doesn't slow down as you scroll. It does break momentum scrolling sometimes. - I'm not too sure about search compared to all the Gmail filters, but filters are run via sieve. A real power user can edit the raw sieve commands if they like, but there's a UI on top that's powerful enough for most uses. There's no "Filter messages like these" though, that was handy. - Turning off Chat/Hangout did make Gmail use less RAM and start faster, but didn't improve load times once it was active. - Switching was fairly easy for me, since I use my own domain. Fastmail imported my old Gmail data via IMAP and I just switched MXs. - With you on Google Suggest. Fastmail have had their share of problems, but they report them quickly and write up what went wrong.
- lumpygravy 13y ago- Yes, initial payload size matters. But where's the true comparison about what each app is loading? How are the features and the UX? Would a power user be satisfied with Fastmail (e.g. search, filters, etc.)? (It looks nice, but none of this was discussed at all). My experience with Fastmail's webmail (coming from GApps) is that it has all the features a power user needs, minus the annoying Google+ and Google Drive integration. Heck, it even uses GMail-style keyboard shortcuts. The primary downside is that you lose labels (and get folders instead). - Switching is never as simple as described, and forwarding is a fairly messy solution (and will only get messy as the author creates new login accounts and further forks his usage). For me, the automatic IMAP migration in Fastmail just worked, ~21000 e-mails.