Need for Speed!

[mechanic]

Some time ago didn't we get a letter/email telling us about big new servers and whatnot to improve the speed of runbox? What happened? It's still painfully slow to open and sort a folder of a thousand or so items, and I often get delays and 'do I want to break connection?' messages when doing simple operations like closing a folder and opening another. Is this common experience? And (shhhh!) is FastMail any better?

[FredOnline]

Could depend on where in the world you are.

Here in UK, it's superfast for me - no problems at all.

[jl66]

It´s very fast!

Have you analyzed your computer for malware or something like that?. Have you tried in a different machine or with a linux live cd?. Do you have a fast internet connection?.

[mechanic]

You've got a point there - comparing performance with the web mail interface it seems that the web site can open and close folders much more quickly. The time lost seems to be in the 'sort' stage between opening the folder and displaying the content. It maybe that my client (PC-Alpine by the way) takes its time in sorting the items, hard to tell what exactly is going on between the client and the server in these circs. I don't like the web interface much though - where are the numbers in the item list? The display looks insipid and hard to read too - I must try this new interface, roundhouse or whatever it's called.

[mechanic]

Well roundcube turns out to be almost as slow as Alpine in opening and sorting a folder. Maybe it's an IMAP thing? Where's Mark Crispin when we need him?

[jl66]

Roundcube will always be more slow because yes: it´s an "imap thing".

[dbowdley]

Originally Posted by mechanic

It's still painfully slow to open and sort a folder of a thousand or so items

This is quite a large number of items. Each email header has to be fetched individually from the database and so the more you list and sort, the longer it will take. Most customers don't have their folders set to 1000, and many use less than 100. I hope that helps.

[mechanic]

Well no it doesn't help this customer much, I don't want a system with fifty small folders of 100 items each. Google taught us not to throw away mail a few years ago so for individuals let alone businesses having five or ten thousand mail items won't be unusual. You're right that downloading each header every time a folder is opened is time consuming, that's why some clients build indexes in local files. I'm looking at Postbox which someone recommended in the thread about the web interface and that does a pretty good job in indexing and sorting the items. Unfortunately it's a bit too complicated for it's own good and a little flaky,but reasonably priced at $10.

The Opera Mail client is pretty fast too but I can't relate to the idea of working without filters and rules and folders. The search for a better solution goes on.

[17pm]

Originally Posted by mechanic

Well no it doesn't help this customer much, I don't want a system with fifty small folders of 100 items each. Google taught us not to throw away mail a few years ago so for individuals let alone businesses having five or ten thousand mail items won't be unusual. You're right that downloading each header every time a folder is opened is time consuming, that's why some clients build indexes in local files. I'm looking at Postbox which someone recommended in the thread about the web interface and that does a pretty good job in indexing and sorting the items. Unfortunately it's a bit too complicated for it's own good and a little flaky,but reasonably priced at $10.

The Opera Mail client is pretty fast too but I can't relate to the idea of working without filters and rules and folders. The search for a better solution goes on.

He didn't tell you to create fifty folders, or to create more folders at all...

While using the Runbox webmail, go to "Webmail" and then "Preferences"... There you'll be able to change the "Messages per page".. I find 50 to be enough for me, but perhaps you want 100..

You should do the above for every folder you have, and I bet the loading times will be much faster.

[mechanic]

Originally Posted by 17pm

He didn't tell you to create fifty folders, or to create more folders at all...

That's the implication if I keep each folder to 100 items or less. Where else would they all go?

While using the Runbox webmail, go to "Webmail" and then "Preferences"... There you'll be able to change the "Messages per page".. I find 50 to be enough for me, but perhaps you want 100..

You should do the above for every folder you have, and I bet the loading times will be much faster.

We aren't talking about webmail, we're talking IMAP clients. The Runbox Webmail application doesn't use IMAP as it has direct access to the databases holding the messages.

Anyway, how would changing the page size help, any sort has to be across the whole set not just one page at a time.

Back on topic, talking about sorting, I realised rather belatedly that the sort option was set to 'threaded', turning off threading helps a lot! Still slow but moving towards acceptable. Threading must be a lot slower than basic sorting.

Thanks everyone for their thoughts!

[dbowdley]

Originally Posted by mechanic

We aren't talking about webmail, we're talking IMAP clients.

That wasn't obvious from your initial post as you just mentioned Runbox and that usually refers to Runbox access to your mail and not access via an email client. However, you did mention a client later. Sorry about that.

Local indexing and caching is what you need to use with something like Thunderbird or Postbox (I like them both). If you have that turned on (which is pretty much default) then any delay is down to your local machine as there is no IMAP access to Runbox except for any new messages.

Just to clear up one other point (that I now realise is not relevant but has been mentioned), if you did use the webmail and list fewer messages it is quicker because it doesn't access all the messages in the folder, but just the ones for that page. 17pm was correct, I was not suggesting additional folders.