My wife is running OS X 10.3.9 on her slot-loading G3 iMac. She is having problems with Mail.app (version 1.3.11) when e-mailing attachments of any size. This is the second time that she could not get a 1.5 mb attachment to go through. The activity monitor shows it getting to about 21% (it does this very slowly) and then a short while later reports an error and moves it to the out box.

I'm on the same DSL line and I can send the same attachment in an e-mail and it will go out normally. I am tempted to install Tiger on her iMac so that she'll be using the most recent version of Mail.app but I hesitate because she only has 256 mb of RAM in that iMac and I've heard that Tiger runs more slowly on a G3 than Panther does.

Anyone have any suggestion on how to repair her current version of Mail? (I deleted the Mail cache folder but it didn't help.)

Thanks,
Michael

Okay, here's an update. I went ahead and installed Tiger. I did an "archive and install" to make sure it was a clean system and I am still having the same problem with mail. Regular e-mails go through fine. Add a decent sized attachment (1.5 mb in this case) and it only goes part way through and gives me an error message.

If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I am really puzzled.

Michael

What is the error message?

Maybe it is timing out due to the extended time it takes to encode. What happens if you zip the attachment first? Or can you go offline, encode the message, and then send it? (not sure if it can be done)

You really need to get a stick of ram for that computer. Can you afford to buy a 256 MB stick to get it to 512? It should only cost about $20 [dealnews.com] and should make a big difference.

What smtp server are you using? Is it your ISP? You could try setting up a free gmail account and using the smtp server there to see if it is the computer itself (unlikely) or the SMTP server causing the problem.


Craig

Hello Craig,

I hadn't thought about the RAM being an issue. I'll try another e-mail and write down the exact message.

I've thought about getting more RAM for it but it has two 128mb sticks in it so to get to 512, I would have to buy a pair. The iMac really isn't worth enough to put much money in it.

I tried two different SMTP servers. One is the ISP's and the other is my domain host 2mhost.com . It was the same for both which made me wonder if it's something with the computer.

Michael

When I zipped the attachment, it went through. I think it may be the lack of RAM that's causing the problem.

Thanks,
Michael