Right. Interchoob Explorer has defied me for the last time! I am making a stand, and I need your help. I am officially changing browsers but there’s one small problem… neither Firefox nor Safari (the ugliest CMS ever produced) render my work email well…our webmail system is based on Outlook Express (shut up Grant, there’s nothing I can do), and when viewed/accessed via Interchoob Excrementer it’s actually very good, because you can see a list of messages, as well as the current message being open in a central pane.
Neither Firefox nor Sarafi render it like this: you either have a full page list of messages, or the current message is open, taking up the fill window. Also a bunch of functionality is missing in non-IE browsers, like…your personal address book etc. no Shit. No address book.
So, all my Mac-mates use Entourage as a stand alone email client, and then FF or Sf for “surfing”. Can’t do that on a PC…so…
Your challenge, dear reader, suggest a stand alone PC compatible email client (free/open source) that I can install. And while you’re at it: Firefox or Safari; discuss.
I will go with the majority decision, for I am nothing if not democratic in my indecision.
Have you looked at Opera? the interface is slightly different…. although, if the basis is outlook express that might not work either?!
Funny enough I just use Safari on my Mac. Haven’t given it much though, as I use IE at my PC… Good luck!
The new Safari is really fast; the interface is not nice, but there’s a couple of defaults you can change to prettify it.
Have you tried Eudora for email? An old favourite.
I used to use Thunderbird for e-mail before I switched everything to being collected in GMail.
Mac Mail is ace, but of no help to you in this situation. Just thought I’d rub that in.
I thought Mozilla (the distributors of Firefox) did a mail client… and a quick check reveals they do. FAB
I’ve no experience with it, but Firefox is so good as a cross platform browser, Thunderbird
is gohas to be worth investigating. I’ve just downloaded it myself to see how it works.Bon courage. And seeing as you’ve decided to use my music post as a dumping ground for all your foul language, have at you:
And if that was too much for you, you definitely shouldn’t view this
If the server is IMAP, then Mac Mail should do fine, shouldn’t—
Oh of course. He’s on Windows. Sorry.
If only we had MT4…
What is this about MT4, please?
Oh shush Wilson. Shouldn’t you be on a sinking ship somewhere?
So I downloaded Thunderbird, and now realised I don;t know how to make it talk to my bloody email. Why is life so challenging? Why am I doing this instead of working on my manuscript revisions?
Yeah – I have to say Thunderbird isn’t that intuitive. I’m struggling with it now as well.
I’ve never used T/Bird. Isn’t there a tech support forum here somewhere…?
I’ve cracked it, Ian. On the Mac version at least. It all depends very much on knowing how your e-mail account is set up, e.g., the server type and name that you download your messages from, then choosing the correct security settings (e.g., SSL). Sorry if this is a bit vague, but if you’ve any specific questions, I’ll see what I can do to help.
Once that’s done, it looks really sexy though. Worth the effort!
Sweet. Cheers Mike. I had a crack at it, SSL, smtp et al. but not knowing exactly how the servers are set up I’m shooting in the dark. I’ll give our helpdesk a call…
Try Pine.
*runs away
The Frankfurt sailing club hasn’t sunk a boat in seven years, Ian. If ever you’re in Frankfurt you should come sailing with us.
Isn’t that like joining the Swiss Navy?
Lake Constance. Seriously.
The Swiss are very good at sailing – I don’t know about the army!
In Frankfurt we usually go here http://www.segel-center-frankfurt.de/ where you can also take lessons.
The website is in German, of course. I have been here for 2 years and am finally learning the language a bit.
I used to play gigs in a town called Port Matilda, a roughneck, backwoods hill town in central Pennsylvania. They had a yaught club…
Unbelievable.
So we have a Microsoft Exchange Server at work. Which means only Entourage & Outlook are supported. So I decide, seeing as I use Outlook calendar all the time, what the hell. How bad can it be?
Bad
First I have to reboot because you can’t create an exchange account with Outlook running…but Outlook wasn’t running. Then it crashed trying to set up the account. Now it says Outlook has to be online to set up the account…but it is. And it won’t. So, Outlook won’t serve as my Outlook client.
What the fuck is wrong with this picture?
Funny .
…shit…
Can you just auto-forward everything to Gmail?
Sorry Cath. I hate Gmail…can’t find my way round it…
You know Cath, what I admire about you most is your ability to cut through the crap and come up with a simple solution.
Seriously.
Aww, thanks (blushes). Eva had already mentioned it though. And it looks like it’s unhelpful to Ian anyway.
Honestly though, who hates Gmail??!!
Well, what does Ian know?
I <3 gmail.
The other problem is that if I auto-forward to my gmail account, everything I reply to (95% work related) will sent from gmail…and my name is so common so I had to go with tideliar as my Gmail username. Not very professional…
(for those not in the know, tideliar is my avatar. Has been for many moons. He’s also a very naughty boy, so be careful around him)
I <3 the whole damn company. If it was a person, I would marry it.
Ian, there’s a “reply from” option. I have 3 Gmail addresses – one for my other blog and Facebook/NN alerts, one for general mail from friends, and one that is more professional sounding for job applications and such. I keep the blog account separate, but the professional account forwards to my general one. I can choose which of the two I reply from, which is good because the general “friends” email account has a very silly name – actually my poker playing name that a poker buddy gave me one night.
Hey, Richard, I’ve just realised that when you go back to the UK, I’ll have no-one to talk to after all the Europeans and East coasters have left. :( Sniff.
Honestly though, who hates Gmail??!!
I do not hate it… just not thrilled about it (something to do with not having folders….. and getting use to the other way around).
Brooks; I am sure someone at uni can support you into another mail client? And as Richard said, Eudora is a rather ok programme – although maybe a bit old ^^
Cath: I am not an East coaster :) but sure enough, i am not on the “next day in the middle of the day” time zone….
Yay, Åsa’s back!
Although I’m actually leaving soon for an evening of swimming, leftover yummy casserole that I made last night (chicken, chorizo, mushrooms, beans and apple), and trashy reality TV. Yay!
Cath, I’m actually looking forward to not having three hundred and six tweets every morning…
Stop hijacking my blog love birds!
What’s a blog love bird?
I’ve been using thunderbird for years and once you get the connection thingy going, its a really good program. like firefox, the extensions are brill too.
do you need some help setting up?
I’d vote for Thunderbird too. Set-up isn’t too bad once you know what you need. As Barry wrote, there are some nice extensions too.
@RGP: tautology 101
@Barry: YEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS! Now I can’t use Outlook at all and my PDA won’t synch with my PC. I think there is an imminent coffee::keyboard::call Apple moment coming
Barry is helping me out… I’ve managed to get my inbox to load into Thunderbird, but now need to figure out why I can’t send mail yet. And then get my adress book and the 100mB of other mail I need :/
I <3 Thunderbird, fwiw well after the fact. Hope your migration went well. It has the best intelligent spam filter I’ve ever used, too.
@Heather: Funnily enough I was just trying to troubleshoot Thunderbird. I have managed to access my inbox on our Exchange server, but so far no luck in either downloading the rest of my email folders, and i can’t send either…I looked at the account settings for smtp and it’s set to SSL and the correct port but… I might delete and start again…
Gmail makes me sad. Mainly because this institution has completely disabled all external mail forwarding for security reasons. Thus, the old trick of picking up work email on Gmail, and making the Gmail account appear to be an institutional one when sending, no longer works.
I am reduced to using SecurID plus the very horrible SquirrelMail for external access, which, in a word, um, er, never mind. You get the picture.
Well…I fixed it thanks to our Helpdesk, my mate Dr. Lefty at UCSF & our own inimitable Dr. Hudson.
…I’m IE free…holy s**t… wow. Feels wierd.
So weird, I can’t spell…
Anyway, gotta get used to a new system after all this time. And looks like i have to rebuild my entire Address Book. Which sucks. And I don’t have access to the UT address system by default (as I did in IE, although no in FF, which was one of the problems…).
Anyway. We’ll see. Thanks for advice and encouragement y’all…