[Maédhros]

Incorrect. “Similar” is not “same.” Note the quote comparing it to the appearance of “lesser rings.” (As a side note, there had to be other lesser rings besides the dwarf, elf, and human rings. Each of those was described as having a particular gemstone. The point of comparison was that the One Ring had no gem. If it was compared to other rings lacking gemstones, there must have been other lesser rings of the same make to compare it to.)

Please provide evidence as to wether these supposed other lesser rings where. And while similar is not the same, it definitely warranted an investigation at that time.

Anyway, Gandalf was uncertain how to determine if the Ring was The One rather than one of the lesser rings. That is why he was trying to find Gollum for all those years. He hoped to find a clue. He did not know that fire would bring out the letters that would reveal the Ring until he read that in Minas Tirith. (And I don’t want to hear anything about Gandalf tossing the Ring into a fire beforehand just to see what would happen. I’m sure your first step in determining the properties of a unique item is to try to destroy it.) Just because the idea of trying to find some writing of Isildur in Minas Tirith did not occur to Gandalf until the hunt for Gollum appeared certain to prove fruitless does not make him incompetent. Not even wizards can think of everything all the time.

I cannot be clearer. In that particular instance he was incompetent. There is no way around it. At the time of the last White Council he must have done something about Bilbo's ring. He knew that Bibo's ring and Sauron's ring had similar looks, and he had a bad feeling about it. The logical and competent thing is to do something about it, not let the nagging feeling haunt you for years and years. I asked you, would it have killed Gandalf to take a month out of those 69 years to find out more about it?
No. There is an interest statement by Gandalf in which he says that he was deceived by the words of Saruman. I don't think that he was lulled but rather he wanted to convince himself that Bilbo's ring could not in any way be that of Sauron, even though he had a bad feeling about it and they had similar descriptions. IMO Gandalf deceived himself by saying, well if Saruman who studied the lore of the Rings think that it is lost then it must be so.
A note about fires, you don't mean the same fire in Bilbo's fireplace that could not even melt gold?

This statement is presenting a false either/or situation (particularly since you did not bother to answer the gist of my suggestion). This is not so simple a matter as to be an either/or. If the Wise are to be judged by such a standard then the standard must be applied to their Enemy as well. The obvious correlation is since Sauron failed to conquer the world in several millennia of trying, he has to be incompetent. He is also incompetent because it took him so long to figure out what had happened to the Ring.

Not true at all. The good guys only won by sheer luck. The destruction of the ring was the only way in which they could win.
If they could have destroyed the Ring much sooner than when it actually happened, a great deal of wars and battles and suffering could have been avoided. The destruction of Sauron in the year 2 of the TA would have been a greater victory for ME than his actual defeat 3000 plus years later. This is what people fail to see.