You do know you can't rely on Gmail, right?

Feb 25, 2009, 10:34 (1 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols)

"I hate to tell you this, but the very nature of any online service or SaaS (software as a Service), leads to frequent failures. This wasn't the first time Gmail failed. It won't be the last. Deal with it.

"One of the reasons why Google enabled you to use Gmail offline was so that you could keep using it when you couldn't go online. It also works just fine when the Gmail servers fall down and go down.

"If you can't handle the fact that Gmail isn't a 99.9999% uptime application, you really need to stop relying on any SaaS. None of them are that stable. Sometimes, the servers' breakdown, sometimes a backhoe rips out your T3, DSL, or cable connection; sometimes the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, and in every case, the application breaks. That's life."

Complete Story

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