Google provides one of the best e-mail services in the world for free but sometimes things go wrong and you might see a scary message like this:

"Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We're sorry for the inconvenience."

In this case, since a server error has occurred, the problem might not be with your computer. It may be a hardware problem somewhere in the Google server farm itself.

Clicking `Refresh' repeatedly so as to make your problem stand out clearly in their error logs is useful and relieves stress. Here are other things that have been suggested at various times:

Things to try while crossing your fingers

• Clear browser cache
• Log off and back on
• Clear SSL state
• Clear cookies
• Restart your browser
• Try a different browser
• Reboot

• Make some coffee
• Go for a walk outside
• Clean out that messy closet
• Send a hand-written letter to your mother

In other words, just wait. In most cases the problem is resolved within minutes but it has been known to take hours and during a week in February of 2005 there were reports of it taking days. Yes, Google does provide one of the best e-mail services in the world for free but sometimes things go wrong ;-)