On Fri, 2010-01-29 at 10:59 -0600, Adam Thompson wrote:
Considering that e-mail was never meant to be near-real-time in the first place... it wasn't so long ago that sendmail's default operation mode was queued-only on a 30-minute (or longer!) interval from cron.
Heck, it wasn't even all that long ago that I got mail whenever I connected to my ISP and did an ETRN, twice a day.
So a 30-minute delay in receiving mail seems perfectly fine to me. Plus, I would MUCH RATHER people believe that e-mail does NOT reach me immediately; the expectation of immediate delivery - implying immediate action, immediate comprehension and immediate reply - has been shown in multiple studies to destroy worker productivity.
All perfectly logical; Next time a client calls complaining mail delivery is slow, I'll be sure to say:
"Stop complaining! Heck, it wasn't so long ago that sendmail's default operation mode was queued-only on a 30-minute (or longer!) interval from cron!"
That'll shut them up ;) heh.
In all seriousness, _lots_ of clients have mail forwarded to mobile devices and they expect delivery to be nearly instantaneous. A 30+ minutes delay would never fly.
It also tends to make troubleshooting mail delivery very difficult. (Tech in the field sends test email to client account, has to wait up to an hour to confirm if it's working or not).