Same device, same year, more impatient. Just like most of the web apps I have to use (facebook,slack), it feels terribly slow compared to what I have been used to before (before what? before. the web constantly gets slower). Meanwhile, I run crouton on the same device and can do amazing stuff with blender, git, emacs, latex, python, etc.

Weird how the web allows seemingly simple task to become so performance intensive for the computer. Reading email and performing similar tasks is nothing new to the computer world (thunderbird, outlook, evolution have worked well and fast for years).

It seems that somehow, throwing more developper at a given problem (such as email interfaces) seems to only make products slower.

Maybe forcing google devs / management to use 4gb ram machines would incentise them?

Requiring 16gb or more for email is excessive.

I Agree. Programmers in general should use worse machines sometimes.

Gmail uses a ton of memory though. On a memory constrained device like a Chromebook, you'll want that memory if you're not interacting with Gmail very often.