I’ve been looking for better email solutions for awhile now. I have “several” email addresses and although Mozilla Thunderbird does the job for what I need for 90% of the time – it’s nice to have access to your email whenever you’re online and also to have a 1-spot organization method. So instead of just merely using POP and having Gmail leave the messages on the server so I can download them when I get home – I finally ventured into iMap and I wish had done so awhile ago. Having my Thunderbird and Gmail synchronized and organized really was much, much easier than I thought. Sure, it took awhile to upload all my email archives (I have email in Thunderbird dating back to late 2001), but overall the move was painless and now I have access to ALL of my email via Gmail or my Thunderbird client on my PC. If there is any downside to this setup, it’s that Gmail can’t be customized to set the frequency of account updates. So some accounts may only get checked anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour depending on past results. Not a huge issue for me because If I’m expecting an email, you can always go in and click “check now” in the account settings.
This past weekend I decided to take the plunge and install Windows VISTA on a 320gb spare drive I had lying around. I have a removable tray system so I can just slide my OS drive in and out depending on what I want to run. This allows me to “play” with VISTA without hosing my Windows XP Pro installation. BUT, instead of just trying VISTA – I decided to go with the 64-Bit version. Hey, I’m adventurous! 
I must say it went much, much better than I ever anticipated and I only ran into a small amount of rather minor issues:
- Griffin doesn’t make drivers for PowerMate that work with VISTA-64
- My HP ScanJet has drivers, but the software package won’t work with VISTA-64
- My very old Logitech QuickCam (which I’ve never used) doesn’t have drivers for VISTA-64
- Palm Desktop won’t synch with my Palm T/X as HotSync doesn’t work with VISTA-64
Out of the above, only the Palm Desktop is any kind of an ‘issue’ – but I can live without it if necessary. I’ll just have to use the T/X at home instead of syncing and doing everything on the desktop. This is resolved as the VISTA Beta Palm Desktop works just fine and the WiFi hotsync works perfectly.
Overall, VISTA-64 in my limited 3 days of testing has been very impressive. The aero interface is very snappy and all my programs seem to work just fine on it. The few games I installed seem to run better than on my XP Pro install. Perhaps it’s VISTA-64 utilizing my full 4GB of system RAM.
I’ve now moved 95% completely to this as my primary OS. I’ve transferred everything I needed from my XP Pro install and re-installed all the programs I need (And avoided the ones I didn’t really need and probably should have been cleansed from my Pro XP install long ago!). Only further testing and experience will show the full picture, but I know I’ve been impressed and pleasantly surprised by what I’ve experiences so far.
I thought some of you out there who haven’t decided what to get me might need a suggestion? So please allow me to offer one up for you.
That should-would-wood be sweet for my sim racing setup!
I have no idea what will!
Hey, switch to Firefox already – will ya?
Psst.. If you don’t get what this picture has to do with Firefox, visit the site and look at the logo already!
I just recently purchased a QuickSwap TRUE SATA II 3Gb/s Speed Direct Connect Hard Drive Swap System for my primary rig at home. What this is going to allow me to do is quickly swap out the hard drive in my system so that I can start playing with VISTA without worrying about partitioning, dual booting, etc. and messing up my current XP setup.
I currently have a complex setup in how I do my Digital Photography/Imaging and my backup system routine. So I want to be able to experiment on VISTA and encounter/identify/fix any issues before I make the complete switch over. Knowing that all my most important applications work properly on VISTA is a huge issue that I need to explore.
