The WMC Blog

Yeah – I love my iMAC…. err… or do I? Well, at least there are some points that I do really like one thing that always frustrated me about Windows was having to have multiple screens to expand your desk and one of things I’ve alway

s liked about UNIX is the multiple desktops you can have at any one time, it’s one of things I’ve really liked about various LINUX varieties that I’ve played around with over the years and the magic mouse wipe the iMAC gives you to just flick from one desktop to another is very, very handy. The mission control view gives you an instant look over everything as well, another very useful feature.

So there I was feeling all very smug with myself and then I decided to set up email. Ho hum. I guess over the years I’ve dabbled a fair bit with LINUX – I’ve tried Mandriva, KNOPPIX (very useful for rescuing dead Windows PC’s actually), openSUSE, Red Hat, Slackware, Ubuntu and probably a few others lost in the mists of time as well and with every flippin’ one I’ve ended up pulling out what little hair I have left when it came to mail. I must have downloaded, configured, deleted and sworn at just about every single mail client out there and it always comes back to same thing – MS Outlook is by far the easiest and practical mail client. Jeepers, I can’t believe I’m giving Microsoft some credit here, but it’s the one thing that has kept me coming back to Windows every time I’ve played around with LINUX. Was this time going to be the same???? Sometimes it’s been ‘can’t import PSTs’, sometimes it’s ‘I can’t sort the mail in that order’, sometimes it’s ‘it just won’t connect to that mail account’, but always it’s been a complete flippin’ pain. So I played around with the default MAC email client, but again I ran into problems – won’t connect to our Exchange, then I can’t group the mail in the way I want – I mean really is it that difficult to code a mail client to group mail by sender? Apple? Really? And so, I tried Thunderbird again – sorry, still hate it – and so yes I did, I went out and bought Office for MAC so I could get Outlook back. Argle bargle….!!!!!!!

I must admit I wasn’t really planning on that – I’ve used OpenOffice for years and 95% of the time it’s just fine and so I was going to take the full plunge this time, but Outlook got in the way again. Ah well, you can’t win them all I guess. So I played around with Office for MAC, great…. now I’m back to Windows urgent software fixes every few weeks – though now it’s on my MAC. Ho hum!! One very, very nice thing though, was I could connect all my various Exchange accounts into one client, which is not something I’ve ever been able to do on Windows where one Exchange account per PC…. “is yer lot matey” – isn’t UNIX wonderful???

So I started to play around with Office on MAC and…. why do they change the flippin’ menu systems? Can’t they keep them the same – it taken me ages to get used to where the commands have been hidden and I’m still looking for some of the more esoteric PowerPoint options. Anyway, I set about finding my software favourites and pretty quickly I had my programs set up and everything works. Bliss!!

And so over the next few weeks I gradually got more and more familiar with my MAC desktop and you know, I’m a happy camper and I do not miss my every day ‘Windows Updates’, or my PC dying every time the virus checker runs, but why can’t anyone write a mail client like Outlook? Then I’d be truly happy.

Next episode – the amazing VMWARE. Cheers. MikeRich Text AreaToolbarBold (Ctrl / Alt + Shift + B)Italic (Ctrl / Alt + Shift + I)Strikethrough (Alt + Shift + D)Unordered list (Alt + Shift + U)Ordered list (Alt + Shift + O)Blockquote (Alt + Shift + Q)Align Left (Alt + Shift + L)Align Center (Alt + Shift + C)Align Right (Alt + Shift + R)Insert/edit link (Alt + Shift + A)Unlink (Alt + Shift + S)Insert More Tag (Alt + Shift + T)Toggle spellchecker (Alt + Shift + N)?
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Yeah – I love my iMAC…. err… or do I? Well, at least there are some points that I do really like one thing that always frustrated me about Windows was having to have multiple screens to expand your desk and one of things I’ve always liked about UNIX is the multiple desktops you can have at any one time, it’s one of things I’ve really liked about various LINUX varieties that I’ve played around with over the years and the magic mouse wipe the iMAC gives you to just flick from one desktop to another is very, very handy. The mission control view gives you an instant look over everything as well, another very useful feature.

So there I was feeling all very smug with myself and then I decided to set up email. Ho hum. I guess over the years I’ve dabbled a fair bit with LINUX – I’ve tried Mandriva, KNOPPIX (very useful for rescuing dead Windows PC’s actually), openSUSE, Red Hat, Slackware, Ubuntu and probably a few others lost in the mists of time as well and with every flippin’ one I’ve ended up pulling out what little hair I have left when it came to mail. I must have downloaded, configured, deleted and sworn at just about every single mail client out there and it always comes back to same thing – MS Outlook is by far the easiest and practical mail client. Jeepers, I can’t believe I’m giving Microsoft some credit here, but it’s the one thing that has kept me coming back to Windows every time I’ve played around with LINUX. Was this time going to be the same???? Sometimes it’s been ‘can’t import PSTs’, sometimes it’s ‘I can’t sort the mail in that order’, sometimes it’s ‘it just won’t connect to that mail account’, but always it’s been a complete flippin’ pain. So I played around with the default MAC email client, but again I ran into problems – won’t connect to our Exchange, then I can’t group the mail in the way I want – I mean really is it that difficult to code a mail client to group mail by sender? Apple? Really? And so, I tried Thunderbird again – sorry, still hate it – and so yes I did, I went out and bought Office for MAC so I could get Outlook back. Argle bargle….!!!!!!!
I must admit I wasn’t really planning on that – I’ve used OpenOffice for years and 95% of the time it’s just fine and so I was going to take the full plunge this time, but Outlook got in the way again. Ah well, you can’t win them all I guess. So I played around with Office for MAC, great…. now I’m back to Windows urgent software fixes every few weeks – though now it’s on my MAC. Ho hum!! One very, very nice thing though, was I could connect all my various Exchange accounts into one client, which is not something I’ve ever been able to do on Windows where one Exchange account per PC…. “is yer lot matey” – isn’t UNIX wonderful???

So I started to play around with Office on MAC and…. why do they change the flippin’ menu systems? Can’t they keep them the same – it taken me ages to get used to where the commands have been hidden and I’m still looking for some of the more esoteric PowerPoint options. Anyway, I set about finding my software favourites and pretty quickly I had my programs set up and everything works. Bliss!!

And so over the next few weeks I gradually got more and more familiar with my MAC desktop and you know, I’m a happy camper and I do not miss my every day ‘Windows Updates’, or my PC dying every time the virus checker runs, but why can’t anyone write a mail client like Outlook? Then I’d be truly happy.

Next episode – the amazing VMWARE. Cheers. Mike
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