I <3 IMAP -> Gmail

I've been a long time webmail user. Back when I first started using email, it was probably around the 5 grade when I got my first email account, it was my Yahoo! account. I still use it today. Back then, POP3 access from Yahoo! was free. Since the Internet wasn't as omnipresent as it was today, I used Outlook Express. Being the geek I was, it wasn't bad. However, disaster struck as our hard drive crashed and I lost all of my emails! Silly me, I didn't keep them on the Yahoo servers (which has something like 5MB of storage).

Luckily, as I really didn't have any important emails I learned a hard lesson with not very significant consequences. I kept using Yahoo! Mail but stuck with the web based access. I didn't like deleting messages because I am just a computer packrat. Bits and bytes don't really hurt anyone (for the most part) if you keep them. Often, old emails can prove very useful. As a result I ended up upgrading to Yahoo! Mail Plus when I went to High School. It was quite useful to have the added features.

A premium member received additional filters, which I was a heavy user of. Also, additional storage which I was more than happy to use. However, this is a moot point now as storage is "unlimited." Even never deleting emails I wasn't able to even get close to using 2 GB. Other features they boasted were improved SPAM management! Back in the day, I think Yahoo! did a good job with SPAM, but my recent experience is that such a large amount of SPAM is getting through, switching to Gmail really relieved some of the annoyances with email that were slowly building.

Now that I'm done telling my history with email, I'll get to my actual point. I really love having an application based email client. In my case, I use Outlook 2007.

Why Outlook 07? Well, I get it free from Speed School so cost isn't a question. As for functionality I absolutely depend on the Calendar and Tasks features which I find second to none. All of my classes, meetings, and homework assignments are all neatly organized and color coded. It takes a large amount of time to maintain but it keeps me on task. It is what works for me. As a result, I always have Outlook open on my laptop. Mainly to be able to quickly glance at for my calendar and tasks. With a simple touch of the tablet pen I can mark things as complete or drag things around during class if the professor decided to announce any changes.

However, when I used Yahoo! Mail, I wasn't willing to use POP3 to move my email into Outlook. POP3 results in segmented management of email. I would be dependent on my laptop for email. Even though my laptop is never far from arms reach, web based email shouldn't be dependent on anything but the Internet.

What is my solution... abandon Yahoo! Mail and move over to Gmail. I have just finished tweaking the IMAP settings for my new Gmail account in both my laptop and my fairly new desktop. Now, when I have Outlook open, I get email notifications, and I can read and reply to email without opening a web browser. To make things even better, everything remains the same if I were to just log into Gmail in a browser. I do realize that there are Gmail notification programs and other ways of doing things, but I'm already using Outlook! Also, there is just something about having emails in an application like Outlook that is satisfying.

I won't be able to use Outlook and my email more tightly with other Office applications until the new semester starts but I think that will also prove to be a time saver. Things like being able to send files and Office documents without launching a browser may prove to be the best way of dealing with things. I'm also curious if Outlook is easier/faster in dealing with attaching and downloading files to emails.

While I haven't found a good way to deal with my contacts, I am satisfied with my decision to move over to Gmail. I currently do not wish to mess with Google Calendar in so far as I'll subscribe to ones I need in Outlook 2007, but nothing more than that for the time being.

I have one last lingering problem that I need to sort out. I am afraid of completely abandoning my Yahoo! Mail account as I have used it for such a long time and have so many things tied to it. For me to keep POP3 access I would have to pay $20 for a year of service. My account goes up for renewal in January and I may end up paying just to keep that account funneling into my new Gmail box just for safety. After a year it would probably be safe to finally pull the plug and let the account drift off into the distant corner of the Internet. If I don't renew, I would be forced to log into Yahoo to check the account every so often.

While my ramblings about email may not be the most exciting thing, I will try to follow up with a post on useful things I have learned and actually found very difficult to configure. While the answer to many of my problems were posted on the Internet, it took quite a bit of searching to find the good answers. Hopefully I can link to them in a future post and help get them a bump.

What! Jared Switched from Yahoo to Gmail?

Ok... I give in!

I have long been a holdout in moving all of my email over to Gmail. I have finally done it. Well, started the process. I've managed to move a few thousand old emails into Gmail from my Yahoo Plus account using POP3. So far it has been very painless although a slow process.

I probably should explain why I finally decided to make the move. I have a feeling a few people are going to gloat a little because I was so persistent with my not moving to the bliss that is Gmail.

First off, I am about to have my Yahoo Plus account expire. I have until the end of December and then I will have to pay the anual $20 fee. For that price I get an enhanced spam filter (that doesn't work well... my next point), no adds, and some added features (like POP3 access and additional filters). Since I don't really want to pay the extra money, and I am not a fan of normal old Yahoo mail, moving to another platform had one point to its advantage.

Secondly, I've been getting spam! Lots and lots of spam. And my Yahoo account isn't slowing down. Now, this isn't a ton of spam. Probably about 25 messages a day, and since I check my email about 10 times a day it is only a few here and there. The problem is, it is consistent. Also, it is very obvious spam. I've even had some false positives on my spam filter that I had to hunt down. That isn't an easy task when your filter blocks over 2000 messages a week!

Lastly, and most influential in my decision, is the free IMAP. Well, I don't have a iPhone (and don't even want one!) but I am a very heavy user of Outlook 2007. I have long used it for my calendar and tasks. I keep it very organized and use all of its advanced features. (FYI: I'm not moving to Google calendar yet, although I can import others into my Outlook very easily.) With IMAP I can have my email on my laptop and desktop in an application based environment. Also, I have long been a fan of not having email tied to one desktop and since everything is on the Google servers, I can just use Gmail as is when I am not using Outlook.

Other considerations were mainly that absolutely everyone (maybe wrong here, but then again) uses Gmail. While I probably could have moved over to Gmail earlier, I guess it is good that I waited. Gmail now offers a clear advantage over the competition. As Google continues to add features I only see myself becoming more dependent on the Googleplex, just like everyone else.

If you are reading this on Facebook, I left a comment with my new address... if you are reading this on my blog... no luck on getting my new address (I'm talking to you, spammers!).

I still am not happy with how my school email is being treated when I forward it go Gmail. I'll have to work out those issues here soon.

My other big task is updating my account information, mainly email address, on the dozens of websites that I use. Well, at least the ones I still care about. I have a feeling that I'll be forced to check my Yahoo email for a while but I will probably end up setting up an automatic reply saying I don't answer emails to that address anymore. The problem with Yahoo is you can't forward or have POP3 access using the free version.

I guess that wraps up my Gmail blog entry. I haven't had the opportunity to use it much yet. However, from what I have used so far, I do like it.

The End (of the semester) Is Near!

I've made it! Well, almost... I have two exams on this upcoming Monday standing between me and the break. However, unlike many of my other Speed classmates, I won't be going on co-op next semester. I'll be back next semester busy as ever.

This semester was challenging but it looks like my grades turned out to be not half bad. With the upcoming break I might be able to post some more about projects I've managed to sneak in throughout the semester.

The Evil Partition

So I purchased a new desktop.  I stayed within my budget.  I only ended up spending $300.  Now, I had an old 120 GB hard drive that I installed Vista on while I attempted to sort out my data recovery situation.

I had 2 identical 250 GB drives mirrored together in a RAID that were used in my old computer.  I knew my data was intact.  So, I attempted to recover my data using methods I have used in the past.  The problem is that Vista and even XP will not boot with either of these drives attached as a secondary slave.  I've used this method many times to recover data from a dead OS (typically XP).  However, in my case it wasn't working.

I moved on to my backup plan, Knoppix!  Now this has worked for me in the past too.  Knoppix will allow read/write access to an NTFS partition and Samba allows remote access to network shares to move the files to.  Again I ran into problems.  Knoppix wouldn't mount the drives in read/write mode.  I could read the files just fine and eventually managed to recover about 80GB of the 200GB of data.  That filled up my 120GB drive that I installed Vista on.  I still have about 120 GB of data left to recover and I was basically out of space.

Not having a place to recover the data to, I decided the best option would be to format one of the 250GB drives and use that to keep the data on.  However, this proved to my much more difficult that I would have liked.

Not having a floppy drive limited some of my simpler options.  However, the partially corrupt partition caused me constant problems.  Windows was not able to destroy the partition in the OS and even a Windows Vista install choked when it attempted to read the drive.  Also, Knoppix and Ubuntu were choking when they attempted to read the drive during an attempted install.  Eventually I tried installing a server edition of Ubuntu just to erase the drive and it worked!

After canceling the install, I was able to go into Vista and delete the Linux partitions and format into NTFS.  That is where I am at now.  I expect the format to finish soon and then I will again have fun attempting to recover my data.

Over all, the computer build has been completely painless.  Even Vista itself has given me no problems.  However, getting the data off of my drives has been an absolute nightmare.

I think I have convinced myself that another copy of Carbonite would help avoid this problem in the future.

My "Server" is sick too!

Last week I fell ill and wasn't even able to make it to classes.  Well... I just got back in town, go to power up my "server" and discover that it is blue-screening on boot!

I managed to swap around some hardware and have a different computer acting in its place.  My "server" is basically an old PIII desktop running Windows 2000 pro.  I use it for ICS here in the dorms so that I can get my laptop on the Internet and in the process bypass a few of the campus security software installs.  I'm really not bypassing any of the security systems because it is still all correctly installed on my server (just not on my laptop).  I just then use my server, with a fancy 4 port NIC, to get everything else on the Internet. (This also includes my Wii which would normally not be able to get on the Internet here in the dorms.)

The problem is a hardware based.  It really makes me sad because I don't have the time to solve this problem now.  I'll attempt to work something out later this week.  The worst part is that it has two 250GB hard drives raided together in it.  A ton of my data is on that box.  I'm almost 100% certain that I didn't lose anything.  The only major glitch it getting the data off of there if I need to reformat.

I might end up buying or borrowing an external enclosure to check to see if my data is still intact.  As for fixing the actual problem, I'll have to make some major decisions.  I might just retire the hardware and use the other PIII I have in my dorm room (this one runs Windows XP though).

The only thing I need to connect still is my printer.  I'll save that task for later tonight.