Could it be as simple as clicking the Desktop icon in the Quick launch bar? I cannot test it because I always delete that icon when setting my computes up. I had a young woman's computer here and she had no icons showing and I was concerned because all her security icons had been placed on the desktop by me when setting her computer up for her. Respecting other people's privacy I never search around a computer I am fixing. But as I installed AdAware I found it was already there, she had not removed the icon or program but by clicking the desktop icon she had placed al the icons underneath and out of view.

Do Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up your Task Manager, click on the Processes tab, and click once or twice on the CPU tab at the top of the listings: this will show what process is chewing up the most resources (which will probably be the culprit). Also, look at the CPU Usage line at the bottom of Task Manager and see what the % Usage is. Then report back here on what you found out.

Google is always changing various aspects so perhaps that feature has been suspended. Why not copy all your possibly needed emails into a word processor and save them yourself? A simple folder created with sub folders if you feel the need for sorting and saving them. Each file might only be a couple of kilobytes each so the overall space needed is very small.

I view the forum from my home laptop (currently doing so) and at work from my laptop which is in it's docking station and view on large monitors. I also view on iPad and iPhone when up at lake. I never have thought about it being a different version/app on the devices. When viewing for first time on iPad or iPhone I just searched the Internet, clicked on the link and presto. I do believe your settings on your device can make a difference, found that out when viewing pinterest on iPhone.