TuffMail and Horde

Just in case anyone wondered. Horde is better than Alliance in World of Warcraft. kthxbye.

Oh, and I was alerted to an article on OS News about an interview with the Lead Developer of Horde. I'm using TuffMail for my mail and I'm really happy with their implementation of Horde. I normally use a client, but I'm finding the AJAX interface to work great.

I could write lots about TuffMail, and I might... but I'm working on a few things at once right now. Maybe later, or maybe I'll just come back to this. I've got a piece of paper in my wallet that I used to do my pro/con evaluation. Sort of the "idea on a napkin" thing, except I never go to Starbucks. I'd like to make that piece of paper go away.

Then there's the Team Leader at my client site. He's a mac guy, but he doesn't know anything about Mac yet. So, he asks questions to the guy that sits next to me. I try to stay out of it. But, in recent weeks he's been trying out MobileMe.

I really, really wanted to chime in and say that there's no reason to pay for all that, just because you use a Mac. But those guys have money to waste, so I'll just let them. I don't so I just use less sexy alternatives.

So, here's what happened with my mail... I went to Purdue University, got IMAP, and need it for e-mail. POP is inadequate. I need server-side filters. I like to switch computers, and clients, and all sorts of good crazy super-sexy stuff to use my e-mail. Webmail is cool, but I prefer a desktop client.

When I left Purdue, I wanted IMAP, but I picked some free provider. They failed on something important that I won't mention here. I got hooked up with FastMail, and they were doing cool stuff.

Then FastMail slowed down on adding features that were important to me, and were promised for the future. It didn't bother me much, because nobody else had them. I tried others and kept coming back.

The straws that broke the camels back was the address book and the web interface. I didn't mind the web client interface at FastMail looking like something some developer hacked together to support features of their custom-built web service. I just used a client. The address book was similarly abysmal. But, I really used e-mail to receive, rather than send, and I could remember or look up the addresses that I needed.

I decided those things were important, and I switched to TuffMail. I'm happy. I can give up the features that FastMail had that are cool.

So, here we go, I'm just going to copy my notes somewhat. I might have to clean up this post later:

Exclusive FastMail positives: proxy servers, file space / picture gallery.

Exclusive TuffMail positives: web clients, managesieve

Negatives on FastMail: Enhanced Account required for all features, have to log in to manage server-side filters, address book

Negatives on TuffMail: No real a la carte options, just more of everything, no integrated file space,

Some stuff is kind of a wash, or doesn't really matter, like saving searches as virtual folders, plus-mail addressing, sub-domain addressing, labels and custom IMAP flags.

The thing that bothers me the most about FastMail is just that they spend effort to recreate something that works well already with their web interface, and then slowly develop extra features that don't matter to me, rather than the ones I want. People are screaming for a better web interface in the forums, and they could just run Horde, and that could run along side their custom interface.

TuffMail does simple things consistently. And, at the end of the day, e-mail is simple. We stack things on top of it, and combine things with it to make it more than e-mail, but they don't need to be part of the core e-mail service. More importantly, adding those things to the core service don't add value that I need to pay for. Twenty bucks a year isn't much, but it is less than forty. That's really why I switched. I wasn't willing to pay for extra stuff just to get the few features I wanted but never came.

Oh, and GMail has great IMAP... but I don't want my stuff to belong to google.

+ Proxy Servers:

New Apple Notebooks

Okay, so Tuesday came and went, and Apple launched new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. I feel good about selling my machine, but I don't think I'll be getting a new one any time soon. Gots no money for that.

I wonder if that's why everyone who inquired about buying my Airport Base Station and wireless cards has been slow about getting back to me. Who knows.

I do miss using OS X, and my bluetooth mouse is kind of just sitting around, but I'll rectify those issues soon. I kind of gave up on running OS X on PC hardware, if I wanted to cripple my machine, I could just run Linux on the desktop. Sigh.

At least the 17-inch MacBook Pro might be available more cheaply in the used category soon. I'm pretty sure that's where I'm going to aim with my next notebook.

Until then, I've got a 1 GHz Duron Compaq laptop with 512 MB of RAM. It works. I can't really ask for much more than that.

What I miss about Mac...

Okay, so, I sold my PowerBook. It was a bit long in the tooth, and I have some other things I could use the money for. Incidentally, I decommissioned my Airport Extreme which is a fabulous router, minus the proprietary configuration interface. Then, I fried the router I replaced it with... an old wired-only Linksys.

It is a bit funny, because I grabbed it out of a drawer, and grabbed the power adapter to my spare DSL modem, rather than the power adapter to the router. A few minutes later, while fishing wires from under the table, I hear a hiss, then a pop, and see smoke. Oh well, that router was crap anyway. Unfortunately, the death was a bit untimely. I don't have anything to replace it with. I guess with my airport, it always seemed obvious which power adapter went with what. Apple saves you from being dumb.

Windows Vista's default Aero interface is relatively ugly. I'm sure you can hack it into a more pleasing aesthetic, and then there's that whole "eye of the beholder" thing with beauty, but, meh... I think I actually like my usual Gnome desktop better. Actually, all I miss is the compiz bling that got copied from Mac OS X, namely expose and the dock... The dock recently got patented, so maybe I'll have to actually use a Mac to get it now. LOL.

I sold my PowerBook

I sold my PowerBook G4. Get this. I met the guy in front of the Apple Store. Heh. So, the really funny part is... now that I am "mac-less" I don't want to use the Apple Airport Extreme. There's not much reason for me to feel this way, since I can still use it.

However, there is one fundamental flaw witht the device, which is otherwise great. I can't configure it with a web browser. I actually have to use a utility that comes with every Mac, and can be installed on Windows (thank goodness).

The device rocks, other than not having a gigabit hub built in. So, I'm torn. I love having a print server, and wireless access point, and router, and dhcp server in one device. But, I hate that I have to attach a hub to get more than one wired connection. This is fundamentally how I feel about apple devices, I love the simplicity, but I hate that I can't tinker. I guess I could just buy a gigabit hub and stop whining...

What if the revolution comes, and all my machines are running Linux? I can even use the print server in Linux, but I can't configure the router... and then there's that whole I-can't-turn-off-dhcp-without-some-hackish-trick thing. Yeah, it is silly...

I guess there's one thing keeping me on it for now. I have a Linksys wired router with a 10/100 switch built-in, but no wireless. I need wireless so that the Media Center box can access the Internet for scheduling info. I do have a wireless-B device that can be an access point or wireless adapter or bridge. It can even do DHCP as well. Hmm... I could just use that... Oh, and I have a couple of USB print servers that I could attatch too.

Clearly, the Aiport should stay, rather than hooking up three devices to replace it... or... I could just use ClarkConnect, get the print server and wireless working on it, and not be so anal. Or, I could just buy a wireless router, and then run Amahi on a spare box. Again... this is a silly choice. It works now, I shouldn't even be thinking about this.

All because I sold my PowerBook. Nice.

T-Mobile Shadow Update

Today, at work, I'm going to work on making my T-Mobile Shadow experience better. In between tasks, and generally filling time as I can, while doing work, of course. So, it is going slow. (I'm starting this post at about 10:00 AM. I've been at it off and on for an hour, inbetween reading training material, reviewing trouble tickets, dodging funny pictures sent to me by my colleagues and such.

For those of you, like my Aunt Staci, who says that I make "boring" posts. This one will probably be boring. Fair warning and all that...

So, music... I've purchased a set of Motorola S9 stereo bluetooth headphones. They're great, and I was going to use them with my Apple PowerBook, but I need Leopard for stereo sound, rather than the simple headset/microphone profile. I'm selling my PowerBook anyway... not specifically for that reason, Mostly because I don't want to pay for the battery upgrade, memory upgrade, and Leopard upgrade, but I digress... The bluetooth headphones work great with the phone, and I'd like to use them when I work out in the mornings before work.

I loaded a few songs from my PowerBook onto the phone, using a memory card that we've bought. They were encoded in AAC (.m4a, like on iTunes/iPod/iPhone) and they worked fine in the Windows Media Player. I haven't ripped all of my CDs, but I wanted to make sure that if for some reason, I go nuts and use Apple as my primary system, that I could use my ripped tracks on the phone. Seems to be fine.

Incidentally, I'm probably going to stick with Windows Media Center and just deal with the OTA subchannel nonsense or maybe go with Media Portal or some other free replacement on our DVR box. It's working very well, and syncing playlists and such seems like it will be great with our phones. Sigh... I've given up freedom for convenience, so I guess I deserve neither. I'll learn my lesson and come crawling later, I'm sure.

I'm also going to try to get my phone updated, and I guess I need to call in to customer service and grab those spare extra capacity batteries that are supposed to be free, but couldn't be sent to customers subscribed for less than thirty days... Sigh.

I'm also going to try to install moBlog, and see if I can try to use my camera phone and post directly to my blog, making some of those life moments more publically available. Maybe then I can justify having this fancy toy, rather than simply saying my wife needs to keep a schedule with her, and I just got one too.

We'll see how it all goes. Good luck to me.

Okay... went to lunch, came back... lunch was just awful, food-wise. My PC is getting re-imaged at 1:30, and I've got training to finish up. moBlog just didn't work right for me. I couldn't get it to work, and I gave up. I do wonder why Wordpress.com has a mobile client for iPhone, and not for Windows Mobile, but there's no real guesswork. Announcing a client on iPhone is bigger news...

I did manage to get the T-Mobile update installed. Avril Lavigne and Dave Matthews Band now emenate from my phone... very nice indeed. There's some better text input stuff too.

I think it is just time to sit down this evening and rip discs on the big box... WMA or MP3?

Bluetooth Mouse

I left work a little early yesterday to go get a haircut, it went quick, so I stopped at Best Buy. After discovering that I needed stereo sound and that I'd have to hack my Tiger 10.4 installation to get A2DP support for my MotoROKR S9 headphones, I thought I'd browse around and see if I could save a trip up "north" to the Apple store on a future journey to upgrade to Leopard 10.5.

I ended up looking for a bluetooth mouse as well as other things... Time Vault, Airport Extreme, external hard drive enclosure with card reader, etc... and found them all. I also found a couple of sticks of DDR 2700 SODIMM for $55... a significant discount from the usual rapage that Best Buy provides on memory. I didn't have money for that, but I'd like to upgrade my PowerBook.

Anyway, I bought a Microsoft Notebook Mouse for Mac, since my old "notebook" mouse got destroyed by my kids. It is essentially the same as the Microsoft Notebook Mouse 5000, but packaged differently so that Mac users think it is special. I'd have normally just gotten which ever I saw first, but the one I saw was discounted for being open. Normally the mice are $50, but this one was $37-something, a weak discount, except that the last sale price was $39.99, so it was more like a $12 discount. I decided that had real value and that I'd go with that. It comes with a nice little pouch too.

Fortunately the AAA batteries hadn't been run down completely, since they were already in the mouse. I will need to download some software from Microsoft to get the "superior" functionality. Too bad I can't hook my laptop to the Internet at work. Also too bad I didn't pick up Leopard... Bah.