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A major upgrade to Gmail is getting the thumbs down from users who complain that the new version is extremely slow, often fails to load pages and even crashes their browsers.
People have flooded discussion forums with complaints since Google began "upgrading" users about two weeks ago to the new version, popularly referred to in the blogosphere as Gmail 2.0.
Ironically, Gmail 2.0, which features an upgraded contacts manager, is designed to be faster and more stable. Gmail 2.0 is based on what a Google spokesman calls "a major structural code change" upon which new features will be launched in coming months.
"Most users should see a marked improvement in performance. We recommend using IE7 and Firefox 2 to take full advantage of Gmail's speedier interface," said spokesman Jason Freidenfelds via e-mail.
Asked about the problems users are reporting, Freidenfelds didn't address the complaints specifically but said that Google appreciates the feedback it's getting. "The new code underlying Gmail should allow us to roll out performance improvements more frequently," he said.
Users interviewed via e-mail for this article report a variety of performance problems with Gmail 2.0.
The most common complaint is that it is generally very slow, with delays of a minute or more when attempting to display the inbox upon logging on, to record keystrokes when typing text and to respond to mouse clicks. Often the tasks time out. Others report that Gmail 2.0 repeatedly crashes or freezes their browsers, in particular Firefox.
If these users switch to the "old" Gmail version, the problems go away. However, these users say they have to switch manually every time they log on, because Gmail 2.0 automatically became their default version once they got upgraded to it.
When Google upgraded his account last week, Jim Sellers, a software programmer based in Ottawa, Canada, was eager to try Gmail 2.0's improved contacts manager, but his Firefox 2.0 browser kept crashing both on Windows 2000 and Mac OS X 10.4.
"These problems were very disruptive. I spend at least 25 percent of my day using my browser as one of my main working tools. To have it crash like that made the new version of Gmail a non-option," said Sellers, an otherwise satisfied Gmail user since June 2004.
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Comments (17)
Gmail hackers/phishingBy Anon on March 29, 2009, 10:37 pmi would like to inform that so many hackers in gmails and im the one who is victim of it once i got mail and it was in my gmail account and it was fraud misusing...
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gmailBy Anonymous on November 22, 2008, 4:32 pmI have found that Gmail has got progressively slower. I d/l'\d Firefox thinking service would be better.I even thought I needed a new mouse as the click did nothing....
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GoshBy Anonymous on September 12, 2008, 6:36 amIts shocking!!! It crashes about 60% of the time on my PC. Then again I use Maxthon, maybe should go back to Opera or Firefox.
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ChangeBy Anonymous on June 8, 2008, 7:56 amAs usual, when something is improved, it gets worse. The least they could do is make it where one could lock into the "old" but better version without having to...
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old version vs new versionBy Anonymous on January 12, 2008, 11:37 pmnew version rocks,, better everything ,,all of a sudden it is gone and i am back to old version and it is giving me this problem---We're experiencing technical difficulties...
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