Poor Mail Performance: Sending and Recieving

Question

Does anybody out there also find that the Mail app is very slow at sending email compared to logging on to the mobile me web mail? I sure do, I did a benchmark test. I sent a 10 word email to some one using the mail app. It took 45 seconds to actually send. ON the web app it's instant (as it should be)... Any tips for settings?

Answer 1

The desktop app is not and should not seem as fast as the webmail. The desktop version is slower because the mail has to be "uploaded" to the server (twice) before it can be delivered.
Both apps are technically multi-threaded and when the webmail app tells you your mail is "sent" it isn't really sent (yet).
When you use webmail, you're not really connecting to the mail server, you're connecting to a web front-end. When you click the "send" button, it'll immediately tells you the message is sent, but this is no different than clicking the "send" button in the desktop client and seeing the compose window disappear right away. The message is dispatched to another thread which transmits the mail in the background.
On the webmail interface there are two things that happen.
1) The web front end contacts your "message store" (where your mail really lives) and stores a copy of the message in your "sent" folder.
2) A copy of the message is sent to Apple's MTA (message transfer agent). This is a server which never talks directly to an end user. It's only job is to send and receive email to other mail servers on the internet.
You are never actually aware of the above steps happening because it's all hidden from view. Thus the webmail "seems" faster because, as far as you know, you clicked "send" and the mail window disappeared and it told you it was sent (when in reality it was dispatched to another server and wont really send for several seconds.)
In the desktop app, when you click "send", a few things happen:
1) The compose window disappears instantly and you see the gear animation in your sent folder.
2) A copy of the message is uploaded to Apple's SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) server (this is the real email message which will be sent. It's actually a special interface on their outbound-MTA (mail transfer agent.)
3) Then a second copy of the message is uploaded to Apple's IMAP server (which will be stored in your "sent" folder so that you have a record.)
4) You hear the animation noise showing that the background delivery process is complete.
Depending on how big the message is and how many recipients you addressed in the message, this could take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. But since it's a multi-threaded background process it really doesn't matter because it doesn't slow you down. No part of your message even begins to be sent to the mail server until you press the "send" button.
Another thing to remember is that most ISPs cap your upload speed to a fraction of your download speed. There's not much you can do about that (unless you have another ISP choice available and they offer faster speeds.)
The advantage of the desktop app are (a) it's searchable instantly, (b) you can use it even when your Mac is not connected to the internet (messages will be queued until you are connected and they'll all send later. So if you need to read & reply to email while flying at 30,000' on an airline you can do that with the desktop client. The web-app... not so good here.) (c) Finally... if you're running backups with Time Machine, your email is getting backed up (if you're running the desktop Mail client and you click the Time Machine icon you can go back and find old email -- even mail you've deleted. You can't do that with the web-mail interface.
I normally only use the webmail interface to check mail if I'm borrowing someone else's computer. If I'm on my own computer I use the desktop Mail application because it's more full-featured.