Questions about GMail

May 18, 2004 12:34 PM

GMail: How reliable is it so far? Has anyone noticed glitches? Has anyone else sent a message to multiple addressees and had only the first addressee of the list (separated by commas) receive the e-mail? Just how beta do you think it is right now?

Now that I have experimented a little more, I am finding that, when I copy my gmail address on an e-mail as a sort of "confirmation" (send TO the same address as FROM), I don't receive the e-mail at the gmail addy.

posted by Shane to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

I haven't had any issues yet, but I haven't tried what you're doing yet. I have been using my Gmail account to keep in touch with prospective employers in my huge networking-job-search process. Gmail has been great so far.

Here's a follow-up askme - can I Ebay my "invite a new user" Gmail invites without Google kicking me out? If not, is there something else I can do with an extra invite? All my friends have accounts so I have no more friends to invite. I would invite Mefites, but I know that the response would be huge and I wouldn't know who to choose anyway.
posted by crazy finger at 12:47 PM on May 18, 2004

Shane - it already saves all the outgoing email threaded into the conversation. If someone replies to you, your original mail will automaticly show up at the top of the conversation. It's also in your sent mail folder.

So far it's been very reliable, no glitches for me. I think the "beta" is more concerned with behind-the-scenes load testing and ad-words tweaking.
posted by falconred at 12:57 PM on May 18, 2004

Shane, there's this: http://www.gmailswap.com/, discussed here: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/33150.

Or, seriously, you could just save yourself the stress of deciding what to do with it and let me decide for you -- namely, invite me. Aren't decisive acquaintances that don't dither about where we should go to lunch what everyone really wants anyway?
posted by blueshammer at 1:03 PM on May 18, 2004

I'm sorry, crazy finger; that was addressed to you, not Shane.
posted by blueshammer at 1:03 PM on May 18, 2004

is there something else I can do with an extra invite

What - you can't think of a second Gmail address you want to have?
posted by scarabic at 1:12 PM on May 18, 2004

can I Ebay my "invite a new user" Gmail invites without Google kicking me out?

Sure. How would Google know that the person got the invite via an eBay auction? I don't yet know of anyone kicked off gmail for ebaying an invite.
posted by gluechunk at 1:50 PM on May 18, 2004

i find it to be very reliable though still have to "report" a reasonable amount of spam. i totally <3 gmail.
posted by heather at 2:00 PM on May 18, 2004

Participating in a "beta" of software means you should be reporting these issues to Google. Bringing them to Ask Metafilter will not get them fixed, so make sure you send them a note. Click the "help" link if you're not sure who to contact. I've already reported a number of problems to them and heard back on a few of the reports. I've found the service to be very usable but it's not my primary e-mail account so I'm not really pushing it.
posted by Voivod at 2:14 PM on May 18, 2004

I've had no problems and no glitches yet. I personally think it's still beta insofar as browser support goes - the feature set seems quite solid.
posted by hijinx at 3:25 PM on May 18, 2004

Mine is fine, but I don't use it that often or send out and e-mails to multiple people, so I couldn't help you with any of that.

I did have one e-mail that took a good 20 minutes to reach the person I sent it to (on a hotmail account), and then it sent it twice. That's better than not sending it, though.
posted by The God Complex at 9:48 PM on May 18, 2004

No spam, no noticeable issues so far. As the McDonald's marketrons would say, I'm lovin' it.

In related news, if you look at the bottom of your inbox, it is now claiming that you have a TERABYTE of space! That's either a mistake, or just nuts (but in a good way).

How big are attachments allowed to be? ;-)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:03 PM on May 18, 2004

Response by poster: Hmph. It seems reliable, but I still notice this thing when sending messages to myself. If I send a message to myself only, it seems to go. If I send a message to one or more other people AND to myself, I don't seem to get my copy. While I realize the message is already in my Sent folder, sometimes I like to see it in my inbox, as a reminder to follow up or such.

On the other hand, maybe I just had a glitchy day yesterday. I'll report this to GMail.

Otherwise, no one but myself seems to have ever NOT received something I sent...
posted by Shane at 8:09 AM on May 19, 2004

Attachments can be 6.95 Megs. The linked article says it's due to some sort of compression overhead. Max advertised size is 10 Megs, although I haven't seen that anywhere recently.
posted by ajpresto at 12:19 PM on May 19, 2004

I just got an error message in IE saying that "Your message could not be sent because it exceeds the maximum size of 10 MB. Try removing an attachment."

I've read elsewhere that support for attachments is buggy currently. This was the case when I was just testing it. I got "Your connection has timed out with Gmail" and "The document contains no data" errors using Firefox.

And now it worked fine with my test file at 10MB, telling me that it's too big. Bugs.

And then again with the "The document contains no data."
posted by ajpresto at 1:26 PM on May 19, 2004