Re: 55 minute download

Etienne Garbaux wrote:
>
> I use Eudora on a Mac for most of my e-mail, and it has a handy function.
> I can set a limit on the size message it will automatically download from
> the server. For messages exceeding this length, it gives me the headers
> and body text (or the first xx kB of the message if it's all in the body)
> and leaves the bulk of the message on the server.

Thanks, Etienne, I found this and set it. I fear it may not help,
because it's what's sitting on the server that brings my mail system to
a halt. If there's a big file sitting on the server, then nothing is
going to download, and setting the maximum download size to a small
number isn't going to make a difference. But we'll see, in the unlikely
event that something like this ever happens again.

The point people keep missing about my particular situation is that it's
not that it takes a long time for a monstrous file to download, it's
that it won't download at all, because it exceeds the space that I have
on the server for incoming mail. I no doubt encouraged that
misperception by changing someone else's subject line from "5 minute
download" to "55 minute download" but the truth is that there was no
download at all, of any duration. It took me 55 minutes to figure out
that it wasn't downloading and that I needed to delete it out of the
queue so I could get the rest of my mail. I should have realized
earlier that no download was occurring, because the ISP kept
disconnecting me "due to lack of network activity." If it was actually
downloading, that of course wouldn't have happened.

 So it wasn't really a "55 minute download" but a 55 minute data
bottleneck, which would have gone on all day if I'd kept on trying to
download something that was never going to download. If I hadn't been so
intent on getting that mail I needed to see, perhaps I would have sat
back earlier and realized what the problem was and gone more quickly to
the solution, deleting the file off the server.

Heck, what really ticks me off is I spent an hour and never even got to
see the pictures. ;-)

People send me pictures all the time, for gum troubleshooting or
whatever, and they download very quickly. So it's not like I have a
constant problem with slow downloads, at all. It's just that I can't
get huge files because they take up too much space on the server, and
that's the way it is and will continue to be.
 
Katharine Thayer
Received on Thu Sep 2 11:17:47 2004