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181
General Software Discussion / Re: are email clients sofware a dead industry ?
« on: March 30, 2008, 08:08 PM »
I understand those who have given up trying manually to organise ever-growing numbers of emails.  Letting Gmail search take the strain is a logical approach.

It all depends how much control you want to maintain. Gmail is a step too far for me (in letting go), although I use a Gmail account for some unimportant stuff.

My main account is an IMAP account (using my own domain) through Fastmail. Solid performance and a slick, lean (if slightly old-school) web interface. Scripting allows me to do all my organising/filtering server-side, so email drops into Thunderbird already filtered by folder. Spam filters are so reliable I stopped checking my junk (after checking for several months without a single false positive). Terrible search, but...

Archivarius indexes IMAP accounts (i.e. it makes it own local, indexed text copy of the account). I'm sure it's not the only desktop search software to offer this feature.

But I agree with the original observation at the start of this thread about the slow development of email clients. I'm still looking for the perfect IMAP client. I swap between Thunderbird and Windows Live Mail...

182
General Software Discussion / Re: XP's slow death is approaching, according to Microsoft's timeline
« on: March 28, 2008, 10:03 AM »
An interesting Engadget article which backs up my previous post on the Eee.

Asus and Microsoft seem to agree that Vista is just a non-starter for machines like the Eee, but the Engadget article says that the Windows 7 kernel will make it easier to build an "Eee-friendly" version, and Asus and MS are already discussing this.

This also begs another question: if Windows 7 is due anytime between 2009 and 2011 (depending on which rumour you believe), how long will MS allow vendors to offer XP in Eee-style machines? If they withdraw XP as scheduled, that would just kill the Windows version of the Eee until Windows 7. And with the Eee predicted to ship 5m units this year (and many copycat products on the way), MS is hardly likely to reject the opportunity to sell millions of XP licences.

All of this suggests that XP will stick around for some time.

183
General Software Discussion / Re: XP's slow death is approaching, according to Microsoft's timeline
« on: March 25, 2008, 08:40 PM »
I agree that XP is here to stay for the foreseeable future.  Microsoft seemed delighted to be a supplier for the new version of the Eee (referred to by Lashiec above) which will have pre-installed XP as an option -- and that's not even due out for a month or two (I'll be first in the queue to buy one).  When a few mischief-making journalists asked why the Eee would not be using Vista, MS chose not to comment.

MS knows how unpopular Vista is in many quarters, and I think this goes above and beyond the normal moans and groans when a new OS appears.  In this month's Personal Computer World magazine (UK), columnist Guy Kewney urges readers to go out and buy a spare copy of XP to (a) make sure you never have to use Vista unless you want to and (b) to reinforce to MS that there is still a market for XP. But I think MS know that already.

However I was already planning to buy a spare copy of XP -- I don't intend upgrading to Vista. I know XP inside out, and I have no intention of losing the efficiency that brings.  I also find XP very stable. And Vista's only truly interesting and innovative feature (WinFS) was stripped out before release.

184
Living Room / Re: XP boot-up problem
« on: March 25, 2008, 02:53 PM »
I really like XP, but sometimes.....

Well, first of all, thank you to everyone who responded, particularly those who sent me back to the Event Viewer, even though I had claimed to have gone through all the error messages and ruled them out. Well, there's always one you ignored, because the message was so very, very unhelpful...

In my case it was "the Server service has not started". What?

Of course it turns out, that this was my problem. For anyone who cares:

Some time ago, I installed an HP network printer on my network. Apparently, the HP JetAdmin software (and some Lexmark drivers) can lead to a conflict between the Spooler Service and the "Server service" (which I now know looks after sharing). This can cause the "15 minute freeze" that I was experiencing.

The solution is to make the Spooler service a dependency of the Server service ("sc config spooler depend= LanmanServer" at the DOS prompt adds the necessary value to the registry). And that was it. Problem solved. But hardly intuitive.

It did make me wonder (not for the first time) how people with little knowledge of computers ever manage to keep their machines in working order.

PS: I had the registry open when running the above command, and noticed that the new dependency replaced an existing dependency (the Remote Procedure Call Services). I have no idea if this will have any consequence, but so far I have not noticed any new problems. Presumably I can add multiple/group dependencies, but that is well beyond my level of knowledge.

185
Living Room / Re: XP boot-up problem
« on: March 25, 2008, 08:46 AM »
try putting a shortcut to eventvwr.msc in your HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run key.
-Carol Haynes (March 23, 2008, 01:41 PM)

Carol,

Sorry for the slow reply -- I've been in an internet-free zone for the last couple of days (never a pleasant experience). I have taken a glance at the event log from time to time, but I'd never thought of putting the event viewer in my startup folder. Thanks for the tip.

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