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Agriculture, skepticism, politics
Header image
Agriculture, skepticism, politics

Windows and email

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Recently, I was astounded at the amount of anti-Vista sentiment at the National Auctioneers Association convention. Vista isn’t evil. It’s a much more secure operating system than XP and I rest easier at night knowing that most of my users are using Vista instead of XP. I have a bunch of complaints with Windows in general, but Vista is better than XP for the average user.

Vista has Windows Mail, which is a new name for XP’s Outlook Express. It’s the Microsoft equivalent of Thunderbird, and I can find no substantive feature differences between Windows Mail and Thunderbird in the limited investigation I’ve done. Out of the two, I’d use Thunderbird because it has an open-source community behind it.

Thunderbird is awesome, but it is email only. There are other functions of Outlook, like contacts and calendar, that Thunderbird lacks in its basic installation. If you use an Exchange server or a hosted Exchange service, which is a practice that unfortunately is still hard for me to not recommend, Outlook is about the only way to go. The closest product to Outlook as far as features go is a product called Evolution, but it only works on Linux.

My recommendation is to become one with the Google Apps suite. Their calendar is superior to that in Outlook, their email is the best anywhere, and they’re Docs and Spreadsheets package is getting more robust all the time. I wish we had taken that route instead of going with our hosted Exchange solution. Google Apps is the only realistic and free calendar-sharing system, and it also happens to be the best. Google’s Gmail product can be used by your domain, so you keep your email address, use Gmail’s absurd nearly 7 GB email limit, use Thunderbird to check your mail, and everything is in one place. It costs nothing and is a viable solution for everyone in your office to be better connected and better informed with schedules, contacts, etc.

Aaron

traffas.farm | auctioneertech.com | aarontraffas.band

Aaron Traffas farms near Sharon, Kansas. When he's not farming, he works for Purple Wave. A 2017 nominee for Songwriter of the Year at the Rocky Mountain CMAs, Aaron is an active singer and songwriter and the Aaron Traffas Band's latest release, 2023's Real Small Town, can be found at iTunes, Amazon and Spotify. Aaron served as president of the Kansas Auctioneers Association in 2017 and on the National Auctioneers Association Education Institute Board of Trustees from 2009 through 2013. An active contract bid caller, he has advanced to the finals in multiple state auctioneer contests.

4 Responses to “Windows and email”

  1. Lawrence Depenbusch

    My geek friends are unhappy with Vista and plan to hang on to XP until the next version of Windows comes out with 62 bit design. Vista needs 2 GB to operate the system properly and even then, they recommend disabling some features to make it function well. My daughter Brooke had a friend whose Vista machine went to the shop twice in a year.

    I got her a new MacBook this month for her to take with her for Study Abroad in Israel. She will be in Beer Sheva at BGU for 5 months after July 30th so it seemed wise to get her a machine that would be trouble free.

    The built-in backup on the MacBook makes good sense, the built in camera works great for Skype or picture taking and the operating system is so compact that they are super fast at 2 GB unlike the Vista with 2 GB.

  2. Lawrence Depenbusch

    My geek friends are unhappy with Vista and plan to hang on to XP until the next version of Windows comes out with 62 bit design. Vista needs 2 GB to operate the system properly and even then, they recommend disabling some features to make it function well. My daughter Brooke had a friend whose Vista machine went to the shop twice in a year.

    I got her a new MacBook this month for her to take with her for Study Abroad in Israel. She will be in Beer Sheva at BGU for 5 months after July 30th so it seemed wise to get her a machine that would be trouble free.

    The built-in backup on the MacBook makes good sense, the built in camera works great for Skype or picture taking and the operating system is so compact that they are super fast at 2 GB unlike the Vista with 2 GB.

  3. Both XP and Vista come in 64-bit editions. Vista does need 2 GB to operate, but I would actually recommend 4 GB to work ‘properly’. My issues with Windows in general is that it’s too resource-hungry compared to Linux. Vista is slower than XP on comparable hardware, but XP was slower than 98 and ME on comparable hardware so I don’t factor the hardware-needs aspect into a comparison.

    Is Vista better enough than XP to justify buying Vista to replace XP on an existing system? I don’t know that it is. Is there something wrong with Vista that would justify buying XP to replace Vista on a new machine? Absolutely not.

    It boils down to this: if you want a light operating system that just works, run Linux.

  4. Both XP and Vista come in 64-bit editions. Vista does need 2 GB to operate, but I would actually recommend 4 GB to work ‘properly’. My issues with Windows in general is that it’s too resource-hungry compared to Linux. Vista is slower than XP on comparable hardware, but XP was slower than 98 and ME on comparable hardware so I don’t factor the hardware-needs aspect into a comparison.

    Is Vista better enough than XP to justify buying Vista to replace XP on an existing system? I don’t know that it is. Is there something wrong with Vista that would justify buying XP to replace Vista on a new machine? Absolutely not.

    It boils down to this: if you want a light operating system that just works, run Linux.

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