Gradually stopping using Microsoft!!

hey duuuudes... i've been playing around with loads of alternative pc stuff...instead of microsoft!

for my browser i'm using Mozilla Firefox, and my email is handled by Mozilla Thunderbird, get em here - www.mozilla.org
they're free, and actually better than the Microsoft ones, thats probably because they aren't well known enough to have virus holes yet but they're faster and more reliable...

i'm now using gmail instead of hotmail which ROCKS totally!! if anyone wants a gmail account then PM me and i'll send you an invite, i have about 40 left.
http://gmail.google.com

i just swapped to Trillian instead of Messenger, which allows you to view MSN, Yahoo and ICQ etc.... contacts all at the same time... www.trillian.cc

now i just have to do the biggy and swap to Linux or something

hahaha... you can tell i'm unemployed and don't have anything better to do!
Jaz

 

Get a job you dirty hippy! That is cool though. I'm still suspicious of gmail though, Google is huge, and may take over the world, I'm not sure if it's much better than Microsoft corporation wise....

 

yeah i was searching for a PC version of Adium, thats how i found trillian.
I'll stick with Google until it looks like it's gonna declare war on something, sal.

 

That's what they said about Skynet:&

 

Thunderbird's a shit email prog as far as I'm concerned. Firefox is the only browser you should consider using though. However, beware: you're bound to encounter a fair few pages that simply won't work in any flavour of Mozilla. For an example, try out English Heritage and see how far you get. Check it in IE too for a side-by-side comparison.

Half the problem is that Mozilla/Firefox doens't implement Active X. While this is better from a security perspective, many websites rely on Active X componenets to display correctly.

The other major problem is a little something called 'user agent referral'. This is basically where your browser advertises it's make and model to a website. Some websites refuse to allow anything other than IE past the front door, even though those pages would display perfectly well in any browser. In these instances, the page will simply not be served to your browser unless the server identifies it as IE. Fortunately, there's a way round this little problem. Mozilla/Firefox allow you to spoof your user agent ID, thus fooling such pages into loading. While it's easy enough to do this in user prefs, there's a handy little extension available that'll take all the hard work out for you, allowing you to select a browser ID to fake from the 'tools' menu. Get it here.

Don't be fooled by the hype though. Microsoft's a big corporation, and there's a lot that it actually manages to do better than anyone else. I've yet to find an email program that gives me the same functionality as Outlook, for example. On the brower front though, IE is rapidly turning into outdated junk. Firefox is the way to go.

Linux is all well and good, but it needs a much larger market penetration before it's of much use to many people. Simply put, half the software you may want to run simply won't be available for Linux. If you use your computer for gaming, you can rule Linux straight out. If you want to use Photoshop, rule Linux straight out. If you want to use your computer for a bit of web browsing, word processing and listening to a few mp3s, you'll probably be ok. And of course, let's not forget that XP Pro is a fairly solid OS. It's major failing is that it's resource-intensive, but that's only a real issue on older machines. My rig's never really broken a sweat.

Oh, and as for Google vs Hotmail..... webmail in general is for girls. Real men use pop3. Well ok, real men use SMPT feed, but that's another story......

 

gmail works with pop3, you can set it up with outlook its really impressive - can use the google search power to find specifc emails...
i'd ideally like a mac - they rock but money no can do... haha
oh well... hey Dok i'm only experimenting, i know outlook IS better than thunderbird

 

Where your telephone line connects to ADSL hardwarde (DSLAM) in the exchange, there's a device that removes the ATM data layer and converts it into raw PPP datavfor the internet (and that's as simple as I can make it!). The device that removes (or 'terminates') the ATM layer is called the terminator. Lucent Technologies supply terminator cards that fit into the back of their DSLAMS, the model of which is.... wait for it.... the T1000. I bet whatever geek slipped that model notation passed the suits must have pissed himself.

 

So does hotmail and many other webmail services. It's still a webmail interface though, which is fundamentally pants.

 

well naaaaaaaaa i like it...

 

That's because you're a girlllllllllllll

 

But Apple is another monopoly, just not as huge as Microsoft

I don't like outlook ... For some reason it won't let you save an email with a .eml extension. It also won't let you view a saved eml's. My favoourite email client is pocomail, you're supposed to pay for it but then you're supposed to pay for outlook too.

 

Has hotmail changed? They used to have some strange non pop3 http server configuration that would only work through a browser, outlook or outlook express ... (MS keeping it the family like they do)

 

yeah dok....i am

i dunno paul man, but now they don't let you use hotmail through outlook unless you pay for it...

 

I've recently started using Firefox and I'm pretty impressed with it. It seems so much faster then IE, both in loading and when in use. IE seems to have to clunk around with the hard drive for ages to do anything, which is very annoying since my computers hard drive is by a long way its slowest point. I've not yet come across any sites that didn't work, but if I did its easy enough just to switch over to IE. After I've been using it a week I'm going to run an Adaware scan to see how it compares to IE in that respect, since that used to get loads in a week. I've downloaded Thunderbird, but havn't been able to try it yet since I've got OE to remember my password and I can't ind the bit of paper with it on to put it into Thunderbird :&

 

No, I meant in the sense that it allows you to poll pop3 servers and pull mail from them into Hotmail.

 

I use Firefox and Thunderbird. I've been a big thunderbird fan for quite a while now, I don't think I'd use another email program. The BEST email program I've used was kmail under KDE for Mandrake Linux, it's excellent.

I use gmail too. I got an account when it started out and it's excellent. It stops the vast majority of my spam, which is very useful when I have my spam mail accounts forwarding to it.

You can dual-boot a linux installation, a distro like Mandrake has an excellent parition program built into it to make this even easier! I had a dual-boot laptop with Gentoo and Windows XP, I'd mostly use Gentoo but then boot into windows when I needed to use a program which linux hadn't already created a better version of.

The GIMP is an excellent graphics program under linux and certainly one of the only ones a graphic newbie like me has managed to work out and use! Kmail is a great email program under the KDE windows management system and the themes and customability of linux is far above that of a windows installation (even with windowblinds installed..).

I'm using windowsXP at the moment because this is a new computer and I haven't really got the windows installation sorted out yet, let alone another OS!

Linux rocks, and is definitely the way forward.

 

See, in more years of internet use than I care to count, I've never received a single piece of spam to any of my main email addresses. Spam is 99% down to user error - using your email address to sign up with companies or lists who're going to sell on your details to a spammer. Your mail provider shouldn't be your main line of defence against spam - you should be your main line of defence against spam.

You can dual boot a windows installation if you really want to. But then, what's the point? If you've switched to Linux, it kinda defeats the purpose to have Windows still sitting on your hard drive, dunnit?

I'm as geek as they come. I work for a major ISP. I spend my days working from a command line in Lucent and Cisco hardware. But talk like this is just geek nonsense. Linux simply does not have anything like the range of software that's available for Windows. That's not to say that it can't have, but at this point in time, migrating to Linux represents a significant downgrade in functionality for many people.

And this is a perfect example. GIMP has nothing like the functionality of Photoshop. It's a mere puppy by comparison. Ever found a decent RAW file editor for GIMP? I sincerely doubt it. As someone who spends a lot of time and money on digital photography, I can tell you that GIMP just doesn't cut the mustard.

I don't mind people being keen on Linux. I've nothing against it. It's a rock-solid OS. I look forward to the day when it will be able to offer serious competition to Windows - but that day has not yet arrived.

 

I agree ... I've messed around with a few flavours of Linux ... Mandrake being the most user friendly. However there is always something missing .. It makes a great server, but desktop capability has a long way to go.

For instance, I use a lot of macromedia products; mainly flash, fireworks and dreamweaver, I also use Adobe photoshop and acrobat writer, nothing available on Linux comes close unless you use Wine (a windows emulator) to run them ... if you do that then what's the point?

As for office software, I prefer to use MS office because it is more intuitive than star/open office ... Also, if you use a lot of different PC's then it's better to stick to the same programmes than keep learning new ones.

I dislike microsoft, I hate their business practices and the way that they have used dirty tricks to monopolise the market ... however, until some of the other software big boys start making their products available for Linux we really don't stand a chance ...

As for firefox ... I'm addicted to the IE clicking noise you get when you follow a link ... not worried about non w3c compliant websites, in my opinion that's their loss ... but take away my clicking noise and I feel naked

 

Yeah, this is a major factor for me. For instance, I have a network of three PCs and one laptop. I need to be able to access my Outlook profile from any workstation. Maybe I could achieve the same using Linux, but then I'd need it installed on every machine on my LAN. Plus seeing as I use terminal services to connect to my server, that'd leave me a bit stuffed.

Yeah, that's the bottom line. But on the bright side, Microsoft products aren't exactly expensive as such, are they?

LOL yeah, that was about the only thing I missed about IE.

 

Not if you buy them from the same shop as me