Why is my laptop Gmail so slow?

[Agunat]

When using my computer sometimes (not always) it can take an email sent to me 5 or even 10 minutes to show up.  Originally Gmail help said this was because there are two email addresses involved.  When I originally setup my Gmail address I wanted to keep my established email address, call it 1...@456.com.  People still address my email that way and Google intercepts it and pulls it into my Gmail account.  When I type an email from my Gmail account it goes the opposite way and people see the email coming from 1...@456.com..  Supposedly it takes Gmail longer because it has to route through the original address.  This sounds very feasible BUT... it does not work that way on my cell phone.  A message may show up in my Gmail inbox on the cell phone but not on the computer for 5 or 6 minutes.  What gives?

Thanks in advance... Bob

[Andy]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 5:42 PM, Agunat <newma...@gmail.com> wrote:

​..

.  A message may show up in my Gmail inbox on the cell phone but not on the computer for 5 or 6 minutes.  What gives?

​There are a lot of unknowns here, things you haven't told us, which makes it impossible to answer.

There are two ways to get messages from the "1...@456.com"​ account into your Gmail account.  One way is for the 456.com account to forward them to your Gmail account, if your 456.com account provides auto-forwarding capability.  This can happen almost instantly but depends on how quickly the 456.com servers can do it.

The other way is for Gmail to periodically "poll" your 456.com account (using the POP protocol), and retrieve new messages after they arrive.  This can take time because Gmail doesn't spend every second (or even every minute) logging into and out of your 456.com account and checking and re-checking and re-checking it.  Hence the delay.  (FYI, Gmail doesn't actually "intercept" messages sent to your 456.com account; it finds them there after they have arrived at the 456.com account.)  If this is what you use, the intervals between polling the other account depend on how much email activity has happened there recently ... from about 10 minutes apart, to a few hours apart.

Then, after a message reaches your Gmail account, it can now get to your laptop.  That's another delay, that depends on what your laptop is doing, but from my experience it's probably about 30 seconds (between the time that a message gets to your Gmail account and the indication of it reaches your laptop).

How does your cellphone get messages?  Does it get them from the same exact Gmail account as the one your laptop accesses?  If so, then the laptop's delay would I think be due to the laptop, since the cellphone can't display a message until your Gmail account has received it, which is the same account for both the cellphone and the laptop.

Regards,

Andy

[Marko Vukovic]

On Sat, Sep 27, 2014 at 2:56 PM, Andy <AI.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

How does your cellphone get messages?  Does it get them from the same exact Gmail account as the one your laptop accesses?  If so, then the laptop's delay would I think be due to the laptop, since the cellphone can't display a message until your Gmail account has received it, which is the same account for both the cellphone and the laptop.

​I'm guessing that Bob's cellphone is connected directly to the 456.com account via IMAP while his Gmail is simply checking the mailbox via POP at intervals.​

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Marko