I have noticed that the Gmail folks have made improvements to their web interface for people connecting over low bandwidth or unreliable internet connections. They now display a message that says something like: "your connection is too slow, click HERE to view your mail using standard HTML view." This is great, but sometimes still, its not enough.

Here are two tricks we use to access Gmail from Malawi:

• Get Mozilla Thunderbrid and use Gmail's POP capabilities to access your mail.
• Also instead of going to http://www.gmail.com try going to http://m.gmail.com. This is the mobile version of gmail intended for cellphones and PDAs. It is very simple interface without unnecessary pictures or text and also works great on your desktop when you are on an unreliable internet connections