You are currently viewing a snapshot of www.mozilla.org taken on April 21, 2008. Most of this content is highly out of date (some pages haven't been updated since the project began in 1998) and exists for historical purposes only. If there are any pages on this archive site that you think should be added back to www.mozilla.org, please file a bug.

Skip to main content
Mail Performance Results for Windows
Tested and compiled by Stephen Donner <stephend@netscape.com>

Machine Configuration:
  • Windows XP, Pentium 4, 1.7 GHz, 256MB of RAM.
  • Any area with '-' means that the area is impossible to test with only a stopwatch.
  • Areas with <0.30 reflect the fact that human reaction time is ~ 20ms, so these are general measurements.
Area Tested Methodology for the Area
Folder Loading Speed Time to load the summary file with 1,000 messages after launching the mail client (local folders). (When you save this, take the .txt extension off of the file.)
Thread Pane Scrolling Speed Time to scroll 1,000 messages in real-time from top to bottom. 
Message Display Speed Display 5 10kb messages from a POP inbox.
Thread Pane Sorting 1,000 message folder, sort by subject, sort by sender, and then sort by date. (Initial sort of date was done to inititiate sort state. Not timed). 
Message Reply Speed
 Click Reply All to a 2kb HTML message sent to 5 recipients.
Forwarding 30kb inline Forward a 30kb message inline.
New Window Time Click New Msg.
Batch Delete 5 Messages Select 5 messages at once and Delete (local folder). 
Mail Module Loading Time Launch the application by doing <[appname.exe] -mail> (if it supports/requires arguments to the executable)

Area Tested Netscape 7 trunk (2002-12-17)
 Netscape 7.01 RTM
 Outlook Express 6
 Netscape 4.80
Folder Loading Speed <0.30
 <0.30
 <0.30
 <0.30
Thread Pane Scrolling Speed -
 -
-
 -
Message Display Speed 3.84 [3.80, 3.87, 3.84]
 3.86 [3.84, 3.84, 3.91]
 2.58 [2.57, 2.61, 2.55]]
 3.97 [4.01, 3.89, 4.00]
Thread Pane Sorting <0.30
 <0.30 <0.30
 <0.30
Message Reply Speed (2kb html message)
 0.89 [0.92, 0.88, 0.89]
 0.99 [0.98, 1.03, 0.97]
 0.46 [0.46, 0.48, 0.44]
 0.43 [0.42, 0.45, 0.42]
Forwarding 30kb inline
 0.78 [0.77, 0.79, 0.79]
 0.86 [0.87, 0.83, 0.87]
 [TBD]
 [TBD]
New Window Time 0.70 [0.69, 0.72, 0.69]
 0.81 [0.79, 0.82, 0.81]
 <0.30
 0.45 [0.45, 0.43, 0.46]
Batch Delete 5 Messages <0.30
 <0.30
 0.37 [0.35, 0.38, 0.37]
 0.43 [0.45, 0.41, 0.43]
Mail Module Loading Time 3.50 [3.26, 3.95, 3.30]
 4.55 [4.53, 4.56, 4.54] [TBD]
 2.28 [2.28, 2.31, 2.25]