Order of Processing

[Ralph Sanford]

On Fri, 07 Jan 2000 11:00:43 -0800 (PST), John M Price PhD wrote:

>
>PMMail/2 seems to me to be more than just a bit of a cycle hog.  Perhaps
>the programmers started out in Windoze?
>

PMMail/2 a cycle hog???  Perhaps you should try using a real cycle hog
like Outlook.  My home system PMMail/2 on a 233 w/64 ram can download
1-200 messages in around two minutes (I don't time it) and while the
messages are being downloaded I can still use my machine to do other
productive work or even start reading the new mail.  My office machine
running WinNT and Outlook on 266 w/96 ram takes approx 2 to 3 times as
long to download messages and while Outlook is downloading I can not do
anything on that machine except watch the incoming messages pile up;
appears that when Outlook starts grabbing cpu cycles that the mouse and
keyboard are locked out.


>That said, and with all its benefits, can someone tell me of what good
>it is to filter messages as they come in?  I see that routine as tying
>up the phone line for no good reason.
>
>So, what detriment would harm the user if the messsages were downloaded,
>then processed, rather than processed one at a time?
>
>TIA.
>--

Filtering is very important when you are downloading large numbers of
messages at a single batch.  I certainly don't want to wade through 200
messages to find the one important message I was waiting for.   Filters
take a mess of messages and sorts those messages into an organized scheme
that allows me to deal with priority message groups first and to
competely ignore less important message groups until it is convenient to
handle them.  Filters can automatically deal with some mail with a canned
reply which further saves my time.  And filters provide a reasonable
amount of spam control by use of the kill filter for identified problems
and my final filter, after mail has been sorted into specified groups, is
a filter that captures correctly addressed to me, miscellaneous mail. 
This means that any leftover, incorrectly address mail is likely spam and
is deleted, again without my time being involved.

In a nutshell filters save me a lot time when dealing with email due to
the filters ability to sort and do some minor processing.  As for the
time that filters may extend a connection to a phone line?? perhaps that
is a difference for some.  Both my home and office connections are ADSL,
so my combined download and filter processing time are not a concern, but
my time to have to deal with the final downloaded messages is a concern.

HTH.
 

Ralph Sanford        -        If your government does not trust you,
rsanford@telusplanet.net    -    should you trust your government?

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