Slow email retrieval.

[5aLIVE]

Hello,
I've been a PopMan user for years, it has served me very well.
I have always been using v1.3.1 as the program never found updates whenever I checked.

Since one of my email accounts switched off TLS 1.0 and 1.1 I started looking for a solution and was delighted to find that PopMan is still in development.

I downloaded and unzippped version 1.3.14.
One of the machines I use runs XP so I had to enable TLS 1.2 support. I am now able to retrieve emails from this account once more. The problem is that the email retrieval is very slow and causes a high CPU load ~80% when compared ~20% on the last version. This slow down occurs with regardless of the protocol used across my different accounts.
Slow down is also evident on Windows 7 too.

This is operating in exactly the same environment as 1.3.1. I have made sure that all of the account settings (including advanced) are configured the same as the older version and have switched off my firewall and antivirus and the problem still persists.
Can you offer any suggestions on how to fix the issue?

I was unable to find earlier builds to download to see if this would help. I was looking to try v1.3.7 first as this introduced TLS support.

Thanks in advance,
Robert.

[Christian]

What protocol do you use to access your mail in PopMan? POP3 TLS?

If so, I suggest trying "IMAP4rev1 (SSL)" instead. Note that you might have to change the mail server accordingly.

[5aLIVE]

Hi, some of my accounts use POP3 port 110, with others using POP3 TLS 1.2.

So far I've tried updating account details for one gmx account which uses the IMAP4rev1 (SSL) protocol using the server address imap.gmx.com and port 993. This doesn't download any emails.

I'll need to check if imap setting are availble for the other accounts and I'll report back.

[Christian]

Note that for IMAP4 by default only emails that are UNSEEN will be retrieved by PopMan, i.e. if you have downloaded mails via other mail programm or read them via web interface, those messages are marked as SEEN on the server.

So best is to send a new mail to the account. It should be retrieved by PopMan.

In PopMan you can mark messages as SEEN on the server via context menu or F8 key. That means the message will disappear in PopMan and will be marked as SEEN / read on the server.

[5aLIVE]

That's very useful information I wasn't aware of. Okay so, I've manged to successfully configure two accounts to recieve test email messages which is a step in the right direction.

Of course using IMAP now means that I can no longer manage old email messages as I could when using the other protocols which is a great loss of utility in my view.
I assume it would be possible to revert back to the older protocols and mark all the old emails as unread and then revert back to IMAP but this isn't particularly practical.

Is there another alternative solution to this I wonder? Would running an earlier build of PopMan with TLS 1.2 support allow me to use the other protocols without the slow down penalty?

Thank you for your help.

[Christian]

You can configure the IMAP4 protocol to always return all messages instead of only UNSEEN. For this click on the small button "..." next to the protocol dopdown. In the dialog change the value for "Criteria" from "UNSEEN UNDELETED" to just "UNDELETED".

Of course that means every time PopMan retrieves all mails in the inbox which can be many thousands...

[5aLIVE]

The quantity of emails isn't to big so that won't be a issue in this case.

Okay, so I've configured two accounts to "UNDELETED" as you've suggested, only one of them now retrieves the unseen emails as expected but it remains very slow between each message compared to using the older version using POP3 protocol.

The other account strangely doesn't retrieve any unseen messages. I've rechecked the spelling of "UNDELETED" which is correct.

update #1: I tried exiting PopMan and restarting it, it logs into this account okay but doesn't fetch any messages at all now.
Reverting back to the default "UNSEEN UNDELETED" gets the test email message back.

update #2: I can provide a little more detail if it helps. When the problem account ateempts an update it states that it logs in successfully at the bottom of the main window and the hour glass icon is displayed for a few minute and then stops without showing any messages. After a few hours of running in the background all the messages can now be seen, this is with the update interval set to 10 minutes for all accounts. Most peculiar.

[5aLIVE]

Christian, where can I download .zip files of older versions to try? I can't find seem to find them anywhere on the web.

[5aLIVE]

Hi Christian,
Is there anything else I can try to achieve the speedy performance I've come accustomed to from an old release version? The downloaded messages are typically only 10's of KB in size so that doesn't have an impact.

I'd really like to try an earlier build of PopMan with TLS 1.2 support for comparison. I just can't find a copy anywhere online so far.

[Christian]

I don't think an older version with TLS 1.2 will work better.

Does the slow email retrieval only happen on Win 7 and older?

Does it happen with "POP3 TLS" as well as "IMAP4rev1 (SSL)"?

[5aLIVE]

Yes it happens with both these protocols and simple POP3 too.
I'm not able to confirm if this is just isolated to Win 7 and XP as my other machine running Win 11 has been returned for a warranty repair.

My reasoning for trying an earlier build with TLS 1.2 support is even if it only maintains fast downloads only with POP3 on some accounts but still I see slow downloads with the other protocols this would be an acceptable compromise.
If the faster speeds were seen across the board this would be ideal of course.

nPOPuk and PopTrayU run at goods speeds across all protocols on Win 7 and XP but I much prefer PopMans UI and overall design.

[Christian]

OK, when simple POP3 is also affected then it has nothing to do with encryption.

One major change from 1.3.1 to 1.3.2 is the support for Unicode, i.e. internally UTF16 (two bytes per character) is used.

That effectively doubles the amount of RAM consumption for text but should not have much performance penalty.

Do you still have 1.3.1 around? What is the time difference for fully loading a set of emails with POP3 as compared to version 1.3.14?

[5aLIVE]

Hi,
I still have v1.13.1 on a USB stick. Comparing download times on a single email account with v1.3.14 configured with the same simple POP3 settings, the difference is approaching 30 minutes, that equates to ~7.5x slower.

Whatever it is, it is causing an increased load on the CPU. My first thoughts were crypto functions but as you say simple POP3 removes this from the equation.

[5aLIVE]

Christian, does PopMan have a command line switch or some other way to enable debugging logs to possibly help identify the issue? I know it has comms and rules logging options.

[Christian]

I confirmed that PopMan version 1.3.1 is significantly faster than the latest version.

My guess is that it is related to Unicode. V 1.3.1 was the last version without Unicode support.

I will investigate further and try to improve speed again..