the forum is very quiet

[markn]

I gotta say I'm thinking about that myself. This new Mac Pro has 4 bays, and I was thinking all 4Tb drives. After MUCH stuffing about with the 3Tb WD in the Elements case (drive doesn't work in an internal bay, and no other drive works in the case... grrrr), I've ended up for now with three 2Tb plus the original tiny boot drive.

Oh, and not a DLL in sight!

I spent two hours trying to figure out why the heck a toshiba 2.5" usb drive wouldn't work when plugged into the front USB ports the new PC despite the fact that it worked just fine on the old one.  Most frustrating is that a Seagate drive worked just fine plugged into the same ports using the same cable!  Turns out when I plug the toshie into the backpanel USB it works fine.  Best I can surmise is that there's not enough current to drive the Toshiba from the front ports on this new computer.  Hear tearing stuff!!!!

The DLL's were one of the easiest thing to deal with and really only a problem because I still develop in an old programming language that has peculiar requirements and less than ordinary errors messages .  The most time consuming task was moving Outlook settings (not data, just settings) from one PC to the other.  You'd think MS would make this easy but my goodness it's hard.  And when you've got dozens of outlook rules, 40 or 50 different email accounts, and dozens of mail boxes you don't want to constructing things from scratch when you move computers.

[Fulvio]

You'd think MS would make this easy but my goodness it's hard.

And this surprises you why, exactly? There's a reason everyone calls it Outhouse, after all. :angel:

Not that I use it myself, but I've heard nothing but glowing reports about Thunderbird. Have you considered making the switch? I finally gave up resisting and went to Apple Mail, only because its so tightly integrated on OSX, but if I had my druthers, I'd revive Eudora. Best email program ever, just a shame it stopped being supported all those years ago.

I really don't know what's going on with a lot of supposedly clever tech, like USB, SATA, Bluetooth, and so on and so on... all this stuff is supposed to be zero-config plug and play, yet there seem to be lots and lots of little gotchas everywhere... USB that doesn't work as you've found, the stupid WD SATA controller thing with their Elements drives, Bluetooth that doesn't support certain modes or devices, etc etc etc.

Sometimes I wonder if Bastards, Inc have actually managed to take over the world... or at least all our tech.

[markn]

Not that I use it myself, but I've heard nothing but glowing reports about Thunderbird. Have you considered making the switch?

I used Eudora back in my dialup days but since I've had my own biz it's been Outlook from day 1.  I've got years of IP invested in it (rules, vba stuff, signatures, mailbox organisation, templates, autotext etc) and nearly 100GB of mailboxes.  A large part of my day is answering emails and I've optimised that process heavily based on the use of Outlook.  And for answering dozens of emails daily it's been pretty fantastic.

It's not perfect but I'd lose so much productivity moving to a different client that may or may not end up being better.  And because of that risk I do not believe it's worth the risk.  For the times when Outlook works well (and mostly it does) I'll just have to put up with the pain of moving my accounts from one machine to another every 2-3 years.

[Fulvio]

It's not perfect but I'd lose so much productivity moving

And right there is the elephant in the room, and the biggest reason the explosive progress we had in computing in the early years pretty much fizzled out to the pale ghost we now have.

Back in the day when IBM ruled the world with the crappiest iron on the planet, people used to say "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". And buy it they did, almost to a man. So they had a stranglehold, at least until people like DEC and DG brought out minicomputers that had ten times the capability at a hundredth of the cost. Even IBM got caught in their own trap, producing machines and operating systems which all had to be backwards compatible all the way to the first System 360 machines.

When Microsoft stole IBMs crown, they also built a ticky-tacky empire mired in very suspect foundations. For all the bells and whistles, MS's technology has always been decidedly low-tech evolution of stuff from the 80's, yet more successful than far superior and modern alternatives.

Its probably an unavoidable fact of life. Apple also falls in this same category, as does Google with its Android offerings. The innovation is gone, basically because of productivity concerns. Each iteration shuffles the deck chairs around a bit, but doesn't really add or fix anything, and usually breaks lots.

What I liked most about Eudora was that at its heart beat robust standards. Mbox files were interchangeable between email clients, and in a pinch could be opened in any text editor if need be. But the rise of proprietary systems put and end to that, and locked people in, usually without conscious decisions by them to become prisoners of their own systems.

I guess we only have ourselves to blame, eh?

[robbiegal]

Thanks for the support guys.Looks like there are a lot of people hoping for a better 2014

hey Steve
I reckon
when your child hurts
you hurt

like I have posted before , our son has thanked us several times for sticking it out with him and never abandoning him regardless what he threw at us
as his mother - I could never do that to him (abandon) - and I swore that if I had to personally drag him through every day I would
just to get him to a brighter side of life
he is an adult now and the rest of the journey is up to him
but when he was a teenager I always felt that I owed it to him to try and light the lantern and pave a way forward out of the darkness of deep depression

I often wondered if my love was selfish but years later and his honest thanks have been answer enough to that question

xx robbie

[ausjack]

like I've said before and I'll say it again, there's some truly beautful people here :heart:
well I don't normally do this sort of thing as I'll admit I'm an emotional retard but I did do some shopping the other day and seen a few things and this was one so I thought I'd share with you RG and tell you how hard it is to tell someone that you think the world of then and that you can't express what or how their help has done so even though it's small and sappy I hope mum likes this

Actually I'll send you one for chrissy on behalf of your son..would that be ok :huh:

[stevo1962]

Thanks for the support guys.Looks like there are a lot of people hoping for a better 2014

hey Steve
I reckon
when your child hurts
you hurt

like I have posted before , our son has thanked us several times for sticking it out with him and never abandoning him regardless what he threw at us
as his mother - I could never do that to him (abandon) - and I swore that if I had to personally drag him through every day I would
just to get him to a brighter side of life
he is an adult now and the rest of the journey is up to him
but when he was a teenager I always felt that I owed it to him to try and light the lantern and pave a way forward out of the darkness of deep depression

I often wondered if my love was selfish but years later and his honest thanks have been answer enough to that question

xx robbie

Yeah I know what you mean Robbie.Jessica's Mum has been letting the team down and Jessica wants to live with me as a result so it will be an interesting few months up to Christmas and beyond

[robbiegal]

yeah steve
when the kids are used as emotional weapons then the only loser is the kid
the big people really have to grow up and get over that sort of behaviour
but it doesn't always happen
all the best with it - at 14 yrs of age the family law court takes the child wishes into account (or even younger if mature)
keep up all supports for her - counsellors, friendship circles - you know - the big 5
who are the 5 people that she can turn to/talk to?
she needs to know that they are there for her & she can call on them and it really does help them so much
xx robbie

like I've said before and I'll say it again, there's some truly beautful people here :heart:

well I don't normally do this sort of thing as I'll admit I'm an emotional retard but I did do some shopping the other day and seen a few things and this was one so I thought I'd share with you RG and tell you how hard it is to tell someone that you think the world of then and that you can't express what or how their help has done so even though it's small and sappy I hope mum likes this


Actually I'll send you one for chrissy on behalf of your son..would that be ok :huh:

hey AJ - you are a real sweetie
thanks mate but shower your mum with them
she'll love you for it

I tell you I just love getting the big bear hugs from my 6ft something baby boy!!  that is the biggest & bestest gift going. although his father doesn't crush as easily as his mother!! I swear that one day he is going to break my glasses!  ha ha

[ausjack]

you give me a warm fuzzy RG, thank you :blush2:

well when I visit you can have another 6 foot bear hug..I've just adopted you MUM :dontknow: where the paper work is though..but it'll turn up

[robbiegal]

if ever you make it to Canberra mate err ... son
you'll get exactly what all of my royal visitors get - the royal MINT tour
coffee at the canteen and a grand day out
we can look at the errors display and check out goldie''s rotation set
watch them make proofs
and then oogle at Titan loading up the planchets in the mint room
and you can also check out the 5c stairwell and see if you can spot any 1972 5c pieces!
then off to a MYO at the gallery
if you get too knocked up with your leg - we'll hire a groovy wheelchair and Mr RG can do the hard yakka (he's a good boy - he'd help out)

then after all that ... you have to suffer having 5 or 6 X 1964 penny albums on the kitchen table where I then fuss about what a wonderful colourful collection I have
and you just nod and agree
or you don't get out of the house alive ha ha

ask PP  or Lacey
they will confirm!! having survived the RG + Mint Tour treatment!!
ha ha

[ausjack]

Cool, now that sounds awesome, thanks RG :friends: To a lot of people that would sound so boring but to me it sounds like a dream. I've never been to a mint and would so love to go and as for sitting around lookin at coins for hours on end, well just ask Kel :winkextra:

Can't say when but I'll get there, mum

[purplepennyhunter]

ask PP  or Lacey
they will confirm!! having survived the RG + Mint Tour treatment!!
ha ha

Yep I've had "the treatment". Can confirm :grin:

[JeffH]

Sounds good. Forget Floriade; I will go for this event.
Can I book at my local travel agent?

[markn]

Back in the day when IBM ruled the world with the crappiest iron on the planet, people used to say "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". And buy it they did, almost to a man. So they had a stranglehold, at least until people like DEC and DG brought out minicomputers that had ten times the capability at a hundredth of the cost. Even IBM got caught in their own trap, producing machines and operating systems which all had to be backwards compatible all the way to the first System 360 machines.

So speaketh the Apple zealot.  It's a bit of a strawman comparing IBM mainframes with Outlook.  Mainframes were replaced with a completely different technology paradigm.  No current email client is going to be better than Outlook in the same manner that desktop computing was better than centralised processing.  

Sure something might be better in some ways than Outlook but NOTHING is going to be that much better that it's worth me changing for the sake of doing so.  I've got the whole process of answering dozens of support emails every day so optimised that there's just no blood left in the stone to make it any faster.

[Fulvio]

So speaketh the Apple zealot.

Not at all. That was the IBM mainframe guy. And just for the record, I'm not a zealot. There's plenty I don't like about Apple, and if something better came along I'd happily use it. But that hasn't happened yet, though with every bone-headed decision they make lately, it seems a little more likely. They've already lost me with iOS 7 and OSX 10.8, let alone this new Mavericks crap, and if there isn't a better alternative by the time I'm forced to "upgrade", I may well jump ship then.

As for heavy-duty email, the real work is in the rules, and I'm a firm believer in open standards and portability. Something the Microsofts and Apples of the world clearly loathe unless it suits them.