As with everything else, moving to more of a bandwidth sponge... I like the idea of using the HTML version, I might do that... I've been using Gmail since it came out basically when you had to be invited after I realized I would lose my college based email after I graduated... With one unit of internet I do NOT have the bandwidth necessary for most modern websites...
I'm with the rest of the planet where Gmail should have been left alone, it worked fine, it doesn't need to completely reload everything when I switch back to that tab, I've left a Gmail tab open on my browser for years and it normally just sits there now it reloads when I click on it half the time...