[mdlug] List archive and long lines

[Dan Pritts]

On Mon, Jan 15, 2007 at 10:51:36PM +0300, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
> It's inherently slow.  Any HTTP interaction over the web is inherently
> slower than a simple disk access to an email which has been ALREADY
> downloaded moments, hours, or even months earlier... (or more commonly
> with Linux and Unix, a mere disk buffer access that's already loaded
> into memory).

that's true but a really bright webmail application will download it
before you want it and hold it in memory and/or cached on disk (dunno
if javascript allows you to cache objects to the disk cache).

gmail isn't quite there but it comes close.  I don't particularly
like the overall design of the app but it works very well over the
web for me.  The new yahoo app is much slower - it doesn't do as
much prefetching, and/or the backend isn't as fast.

I wonder whether gmail locates your mail at a data center close to
where you usually log in if they can - google really understands
network latency and works around it the best they can.  That would explain
a lot of the difference between them and yahoo.

In the general case with all the other webmail apps i've tried,
you're right, Aaron.  

> The new yahoo blows ******* ... I've used it, and had to switch back
> to the old style, because, while the idea looked neat and everything,
> i had just too many failures.  Not everyone is sitting on a T1 line....

Are you on a satellite link?  If so, then the latency must *really*
be a bitch.  Even if you're on terrestrial circuits/wireless, latency
is still a bitch coming as far as you're coming.  Ouch.

I too had problems with the yahoo app.

danno
--
dan pritts
danno at umich.edu
734-929-9770