I HATE Gmail!!!

I have this morning been working through a shortlist of applicants for those teaching jobs in Nanjing I advertised on here a couple of weeks ago.

When Gmail first started up, I created several accounts for myself, but I've never really used any of them. I was just keeping them in reserve in case my preferred accounts (I have multiple personalities!) on Yahoo started getting spammed to death - or getting seriously blocked by the Chinese censors.

However, since I have now had to put an e-mail address out there on the Web (well, not in plain view, but, you know, still soliciting), I thought I'd use one of the previously pristine Gmail ones.

It has just taken me 3 hours to send 10 e-mails. 10 fairly brief e-mails. Most of them to the same recipient.

The compose screen does not work in real time!! It often 'freezes' for 20 or 30 seconds at a time, sometimes indeed for a full minute or two, before displaying the text you've typed in. You are constantly typing blind. Luckily I am a good touch-typist, and don't make many mistakes even when denied the familiar reassurance of immediate feedback. Nevertheless, this is utterly, utterly infuriating, and mind-buggeringly slow.

We get a similar problem here on Blogger occasionally with the over-zealous 'Autosave' cutting in every 20 seconds and - if you're working on a long post, or one with a lot of links and pictures - shutting you down for further input for a good long time. I think it's a similar problem on Gmail - but 10 times worse.

Is anybody else suffering with this??

I suspect that the Kafka Boys may have a hand in this as well. I've heard in the past that Gmail is often unworkably slow in China because intensive filtering of the Google search sites somehow spills over into snail-like connection speeds for the e-mail service as well.

I think I'm going to have to change my contact e-mail address on the teaching websites I've been advertising on......