Mail.app takes forever to send email

January 2, 2008 12:50 PM

How can I speed up mail sending in Leopard?

It's taking eons me to send mail in Apple's Mail.app since installing Leopard. The little wheel in the left-hand menu spins for up to 30 seconds and reads "Sending" before I get the "whoosh" mail sent alert. I have an iBook G4, which I'm aware is an old machine at this point, but Leopard hasn't slowed me down a bit other than the mail-sending situation. How can I make Mail-sending instantaneous?

posted by annabellee to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

Response by poster: Should be "taking me eons to send mail."
posted by annabellee at 12:50 PM on January 2, 2008

How much memory do you have in the machine?
posted by alms at 12:56 PM on January 2, 2008

Are you sending pictures? Using the new pretty stationery? The bigger the message, the longer it takes to upload, and mail won't give you the whoosh until the message is completely out of your hands. A faster internet connection, or switching back to text only messaging are the possible solutions here.
posted by TeatimeGrommit at 12:56 PM on January 2, 2008

Addendum: Leopard adds a lot of pretty-ifying features to mail, bulking up the size of an otherwise empty message. Since as near as I can tell, it's turned on by default, I expect everyone with a slower than average internet connection will get this same behavior.
posted by TeatimeGrommit at 12:58 PM on January 2, 2008

The stationery wasn't on by default on my install of Leopard.

Also, my almost 2 year old MacBook Pro sends messages as fast -- almost instantly -- as before my upgrade. If it isn't the stationery issue TeatimeGrommit talks about, you might need more memory on the ole iBook G4. You'll notice all of your apps will speed up a little.
posted by birdherder at 1:48 PM on January 2, 2008

Are you using IMAP by any chance? Ever since I switched to Gmail imap (also on leopard) last week, I've found similar delays in my outgoing mail.
posted by prophetsearcher at 2:08 PM on January 2, 2008

This might be an authentication failure, timeout, then system trying a secondary authentication method, and succeeding. Play around with Mail: Preferences: Accounts: : Outgoing Mail Server: Edit Server List, and try out the other authentication methods.


posted by Steve3 at 3:11 PM on January 2, 2008

(Assuming it's the same as Tiger.) Go to Window / Activity Viewer. What is taking so long?

Offhand, it sounds like a problem with translating the server's name to the server's numeric address. (The networking kids call that "resolving DNS".) Time it with a watch. Does it take the same amount of time every send? Is it reliably a nice round number like 10, 15, or 30 seconds?
posted by cmiller at 4:27 PM on January 2, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks for the responses so far. I have the (I'm told) the maximum memory for the ol' 1GHz G4: 640 MB. No stationery, no photos, no attachments. It's not a nice round amount of time for each send--it definitely slows down when I have more applications open, but even if Mail.app is the only app running, it takes forever. Oh, and no IMAP either. Could 640MB really not be enough?
posted by annabellee at 9:08 PM on January 2, 2008

So what about Activity Viewer?
posted by cmiller at 8:43 AM on January 3, 2008

Response by poster: Firefox takes up the most, then Mail itself, each around 60.
posted by annabellee at 12:11 PM on January 3, 2008

Ah, no, /Mail's/ Activity Viewer. As above, in Mail, click "Window" and then "Activity Viewer". It will tell you what's going on in Mail.
posted by cmiller at 6:25 AM on January 4, 2008