How many mails do keep? How do you get so many mails? I receive around 200 to 300 mails per day. But most of the mails are from technical lists. All mails from lists, which don't contain important information, I delete at once - they are still on some webarchives - In the beginning of the year, I also delete old technical information, because it's not relevant anymore. So without compacting I have in the moment 1.1 gig of maildatabase and I use PM since the early days of OS 10.0. OK, once in a while I compact the mail database and then it shrinks to 700 or 800 MB. When I switched I also imported my old Eudora database, so I still have the first mails sent by my wife :-) It would be good, if a new version of PM removes this database limit, on the other hand, there are enough workarounds to this limit. And trashing irrelevant or outdated information is the first thing you can do to make your database "slimmer" ;-)
best Matthias Am/On Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:32:42 -0400 schrieb/wrote Tim Lapin: >Barbara Needham wrote: >> Tim Lapin on 9/21/07 said >> > >>> Clearly, an email package with strengths in one place (eg searching) and >>> weaknesses in other places (eg smaller database sizes) needs to be put >>> into the context of the expected use. >> >> Well, huge is anything that makes your database get "too big.' >> And I do kind of disagree with your last point, since the strength of the >> searching is the very thing that makes me want to keep all my mail >> hanging around. I've been able to search easily and quote exact answers >> from previous e-mails when necessary or useful. If I couldn't search it >> all I might not bother keeping it! > >I'm not sure as to which part you disagree. I never said you'd have to >give up searching. I'm saying that one of PM's noted strengths is its >searching capabilities. On the other hand, having a limit of only 2 GB >is clearly hurting some users. Most other apps offer at least 4 GB, >while a few others have a limit of 32 GB and at least one, Eudora, >seemingly has NO limit owing to its structure. > >So, in that context, a limit of 2 GB is "small" and therefore a weakness >for some here. Furthermore, it seems to outweigh all the advantages >that PM provides for these users. Or, to flip your sentence on its >head: "If I can't keep ALL my messages at the ready to be searched, I >might not bother keeping it!" > >As to your statement of "too big", again, I'm asking you to put some >numbers there. Specifically what is "too big"?. I'll add one more to >my initial list: > >-- the email client starts thrashing in its attempt to manage its >database once it reaches "Z" MB in size. Not sure how that applies in a >UNIX environment but I mention it anyway. >
