more memory!

_posts/2018-10-04-save-a-gig.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Close Gmail, Save a Gig"
+tags:
+- opinion
+---
+
+A number of organizations I am part of use Google Apps for their Email,
+Calendaring, Storage, etc, which means that I recently became one of the
+millions of users who recently had too much load time, excessive white-space,
+and awkwardly huge buttons foisted upon them by the new Gmail re-design.
+On my 13" large screen, the new design leaves far too little space for _email_,
+which seems like perhaps somebody missed the point.
+
+The unpleasantness added to my email experience finally forced me to reconsider
+viewing my Gmail in the same manner as my other email: through
+[offlineimap](http://www.offlineimap.org/) and Mutt.
+
+Since I last considered offlineimap for Gmail, it has sprouted some new
+features to handle some of the anachronisms of Gmail more comfortably. The two
+most notable changes are the `synclabels = yes` flag which will apparently sync
+labels back and forth, when set on messages. And the account `type = Gmail`
+which seems to set some sane defaults for suitably handling Gmail.
+
+For example:
+
+```
+[Repository REDACTEDRemote]
+type = Gmail
+ssl = yes
+maxconnections = 3
+synclabels = yes
+```
+
+Once I finished syncing my accounts and the folders I cared about, excluding
+`All Mail`, I closed the many persistent Gmail tabs open in my web
+browser. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the memory usage on my machine
+and the baseline had dropped over a whole gigabyte!
+
+I am aware of how lightweight terminal-based applications I use can be in
+comparison to fully-featured in-browser web applications, but I was shocked to
+such a change. 
+
+With that extra 1024MB of memory, I can run another whole JVM!
+
+