Hi, Cathy. This is a really long message. Only read it if you are
interested in my email observations between the bn classic and the MPower.
If you download, read and clear 50 messages per time, you won't have a
problem. Although, I still must say that even downloading 50 messages on
the MPower is faster than downloading the same 50 messages on the bn
classic. I haven't timed it with a stopwatch, but I bet it takes a minute
on the classic and 30 seconds on the MPower.
I downloaded enough email to know how my unit worked. When I was working
for Kurzweil at ACB, I had an entire week to only be able to read my email
on the bn. I was able to do this wirelessly almost all of the time except
for the time or two I used my wife's cell phone to get mail. It was always
slower on the older bn.
With the new one, I have seen three messages download in one second, but
usually it is two and occasionally, depending on the size of the message,
one per second with the MPower.
At least for me, the problem came when I tried to download a whole bunch of
mail at once, say 400. Even if I downloaded 100 and then stopped,
reconnected and downloaded the next 100, as I approached 400 messages in my
inbox at once, the bn would slow down to a crawl. I remember one day at ACB
where I couldn't even download all of my mail because it was close to 500
messages. The more over 400 I got, the slower it downloaded, maybe one
message every 15 seconds or even longer. The higher I went over 400, the
slower it became until I just gave up in frustration and disconnected.
I had to download as much as I could, read and delete them and clear the
database, then go back up and download whatever remained on the server.
With the MPower, that doesn't happen any more. I downloaded, recently, a
little over 500 messages then another 125 at a later date not reading the
first group. Before I started reading, I had 625 messages in my inbox,
something unheard of with my old unit.
My next concern is this. On my old unit, as I brought up the email, I would
read the subject line and find I wasn't interested in that message. I would
press control 8 on the qt to have the email moved immediately to the trash.
Sometimes, this worked immediately and very well. At other times, which was
most of the time, for no reason that I could figure out, I would press
control 8 and wait for anywhere from 5 to 15 seconds for the command to be
carried out. Needless to say, it was really tedious to read 300 plus
messages that way. It took forever.
With the MPower, I might wait 2-3 seconds on some occasions, maybe even
four, but most of the time, pressing control 8 dumps the message immediately.
On the bn classic, even if you marked the messages then moved them to the
trash later, that could take a long time. Try moving 350 messages to the
trash at one time. With the MPower, this is markedly faster.
As I mentioned before, I opened the King James old testament in around 25
seconds. On the bn classic, this took around two minutes. AAgain, I didn't
have a stopwatch to time this so I might be off by a second or two.
On the bn classic, I would try copying an mp3 file from a folder on my hard
drive. More than once, my bn would lock up somewhere during the download
process forcing me to do a reset. Grant you, I have only downloaded one
thing from my hard drive with the MPower, but I had no problems.
With the bn classic, I might and I might not be able to connect with
activesync. On the MPower, All I need do is to connect the usb cable and
then turn the unit on. I am immediately connected.
I haven't played enough with the media player to know if it is better with
larger files, but occasionally, while doing this with the bn classic, I
would lock the unit up forcing a reset.
Well, These are my observations for what they are worth. I am very pleased
with the MPower.
I feel that if I had to be away from my computer for a while, and only had
my MPower, I could get along very well.
At 8/8/2005, you wrote:
Paul,
I'm really glad you're so pleased with your new MPOWER, but I wonder, do
you have or can you make specific tests to compare email download
performance between your new andold units? i.e.
downloading the same 100 messages with both and timing the downloads?
Doing it a second time to see if things get slower when the unit gets more
crowded as happens with the voicenote I have.
Personally, I do my email 50 at a time and then clear the inbox and free
up database space after emptying the trash and it seems pretty merrily
quick. So I ws just wondering what the actual difference is.
So far I've not come across enough in the mPower beyond what I have in my
voicenote and my Creative Labs MuVo together to make me feel the need for
the new toy...but I'm still looking cuz I love reasons to come up with the
need for new toys.
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