Attachments and Thunderbird

Hello there!

Our office uses the e-mail client Mozilla Thunderbird to access our mail server (IMAP 4) via a fractional T1 WAN link. Usually, it is a great app, but from time to time, large attachments just KILL the client. Loading times are terribly slow, rendering the client useless.

Just wondered if anyone had any advice.

 

Are you sure it's the client and not the mail server? Large attachments cause a significant slow down in download time. I've experienced this with all email clients I've used; and very large attachments have caused the client to stop responding.

 

No, I'm fairly certain its not the server. Users on the servers local network have not reported any problems of this sort.

Just our poor office here on the far side of that damn T1 line....

 

The more systems you have on the T1 the slower things get, there is only so much bandwidth available. Just out of curiosity just how large are the attachments that are causing the problems.

 

Heh, of course there's only so much bandwidth!
Aaaaand to answer your question re the size...I can't get the damn thing to load, so I have a bit of a problem answering your question. Maybe I'll let ya know when it finishes sometime next week. Heh.

 

Guess I deserved, that. What's the largest file you have been able to recieve without problems? Large files as in several MB's are going to cause problems when emailed.

 

Ahh, my apologies, dude...didn't mean to be snarky. I was giggling the whole time, really.

Yeah, it's usually attachments around a few MBs that start giving us troubles.

Just seems weird that the OWA is so much faster and more reliable than the network.

It's alright... I've got the IT guys in the other office as a fallback when I run into this particular wall. The large e-mails are usually for that office, anyway.

 

Sometimes, I have to laugh at myself, and say OK bonehead, that wasn't smart.

Large email attachments really bog things down. Large files should be transfered by other means, such as FTP, torrent. Maybe the IT folks will catch on, one of these days. Email isn't the most efficient means of sending files.

 

I just want to say, that I'm running Thunderbird 1.06 (official release) and my largest attachent I have is 6.7 megabytes.

What kind of mail server do you have? I know you said IMAP, but what MAIL software. I.E. Exchange, etc....