Nobrainer’s Think Tank

Allow me to follow up on my initial review of Thunderbird 3.

The new Thunderbird is growing on me. I’m getting used to the new position of buttons at about the same rate I adjust to the change in year. By April, or July if it’s a bad year, I should have it all figured out.

Since my last review, I installed Expression Search, which has made my email searching experience much more pleasant; in fact I like using this form of search far more than both the default Thunderbird and Google Desktop email searches. It appears that my quest for email search nirvana continues.

One bonus of the new Thunderbird is the ability to view email conversations. Sort of. From what I’ve observed, you can see all the participants and their initial remarks, but you can’t view the entire thing. Moreover, the format of the “conversation” in the reader pane is so devoid of contrast that I find it difficult, at least initially, to easily discern who is saying what to whom.

The most important improvement is the ability to open emails in tabs rather than in new windows. I like it for the same reason I liked the inclusion of tabs in the web browser. However, now that Thunderbird has tabs, I feel like there needs to be the option to incorporate Thunderbird directly into Firefox.

onsider this scenario I regularly encounter. In the morning, I awake to find dozens of new messages in my inbox. I triage them by opening the important or interesting ones in tabs. Once I make it through all the new messages, I attack the tabs. Frequently, the message in a tab is a Google News Alert, which, for the unfamiliar, includes possibly dozens of links of which there are a few worth clicking on.

As it happens now, those links open in new tabs in Firefox meaning I have to switch back and forth between the Firefox and Thunderbird windows. I would rather have those tabs open next to the email message I’m reading. There is a clunky extension for Thunderbird called ThunderBrowse, that accomplishes the task of opening web pages in Thunderbird. But it does not do so well. So rather than incorporating the browser into the email client, I think it needs to move in the other direction. It also needs to be more incorporated than the email/browser clients in SeaMonkey, where they’re basically separate programs where one can be used to open the other.

I would like to see the ability to create a dedicated Thunderbird tab, maybe that can be assigned a specific tab position, within Firefox. Then, email messages can be opened in tabs within FF and moved, sorted, maybe even bookmarked, in the same way that web pages are.

This really runs counter to the light, agile, browser concept. I accept that, which is why it should be an optional add on. But considering that 99.9% of the time I have Thunderbird and Firefox open anyway, I doubt there will be much of a change in system performance.

Thanks, Nanny State.

Microsoft was forced to introduce the browser “ballot box” following a ruling by the European Commission that Microsoft’s practice of pre-installing Internet Explorer on every new computer was anti-competitive…

“Millions of European consumers will benefit from this decision by having a free choice about which web browser they use,” said Neelie Kroes, the EU’s competition commissioner.

As opposed to opening your browser and freely downloading any of the plethora of free options?

This is what I’ve never understood about the governmental anti-competitive rulings against Microsoft & IE. Users have, I won’t say always, but for as long as I can remember, had the option to download & switch to any browser of their choice. It wasn’t as though Windows ever vetoed a browser and refused to use it.

• I’m becoming convinced that Maryland is home to the worst drivers in the country.
• In my new house I chose FiOS over Cox. The internet has been working well, but I haven’t seen a difference VS Cox (not that I’ve really tried or bothered to benchmark it or anything). The only problem is that the Verizon DNS doesn’t find my work intranet. Fortunately that was easily fixed by telling my router to use OpenDNS.

  Unfortunately I can’t comment on the FiOS TV selections. Long story short, I’ve been seeking permission to install cable jacks in the rooms where I put my TVs and my property management company, which is apparently run by people who are under-qualified to be employed as trained monkeys, has yet to be able to get approval from the owner for those installations (They are also yet to remove the “For Rent” sign, or remove the Realtor’s lockbox from the front door, or have anyone fix a leaky sink).

• I was compelled to install Google Chrome this week after one of my favorite work-related web-pages quit working after I upgraded Firefox. It’s definitely a slick little browser, but I don’t see it replacing Firefox as my default any time soon. It has replaced Safari as my backup work browser, however. (No I didn’t try Opera… I’m just not hardcore geek enough to “get” Opera).
• I’ve also been using Bing more and more, but I have yet to see how it is drastically better than Google. Although Bing Cashback is probably going to get a lot more attention from me as I start to buy presents for Christmas.
• I’m also getting close to pulling the trigger and buying myself a Palm Pre. I was leaning toward getting one after my most recent flights and my desire to be better able to access the internet in the airport. And I was almost to the point of buying one when I found out that Sprint has unlimited data plans that start at $69.99 rather than at $99.99. I have yet to purchase the phone for two reasons. The first has to do with my inept property managers. Because of their ineptness, my roomates and I have been unable to fill our fourth bedroom and therefore I don’t want to sign on to a higher monthly phone bill since my housing bills are higher than I had budgeted them to be. Secondly, I realized that after a while the price tag of the Pre will fall down from the $200 it is now to something more reasonable and that if I’m going to have to wait anyway, that I might as well wait a little longer.
• One more thing, as some of you know I’ve been playing softball all summer in two different leagues. I hadn’t realized how used to a softball I had become until I just found a baseball lying around. Now a baseball seems so tiny… but it still seems right.

PS - The DC Clemson Alumni softball team is much better at drinking than it is at playing softball. That is all.

I’ve definitely not upgraded my PC to Vista; I have little need to. Although I have been, and remain, curious about Vista given that I simply haven’t used it. The commentary about it has been overwhelmingly negative, but I’ve always had a sense that people were saying bad things about it because other people said bad things about it. Herd mentality strikes again! But Microsoft may have come up with a clever way to work around and start changing those impressions:

Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a “new” operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that “Mojave” was actually Windows Vista.

“Oh wow,” said one user, eliciting exactly the exclamation that Microsoft had hoped to garner when it first released the operating system more than 18 months ago. Instead, the operating system got mixed reviews and criticisms for its lack of compatibility and other headaches.

Good luck to them.

This may be right up Doug’s alley, but I figured I’d post to get additional responses.

I’m wondering if there is a good reason to get a battery backup for my cable modem and wireless router. I would like to think that if the power were to go out, my battery-powered laptop would be able to connect to the internet through my battery-backed-up router and modem. However it looks as though there’s a good chance that my cable will go out if the power goes out. If that’s true, it means that the backup is probably unnecessary. And it probably also means that I don’t need to think any more about getting battery backups for my TV.

Anyway, does anyone have input or experience with this kind of thing?

The problems with my desktop seem to be resolved. After trying to single out any particular problem that was either reasonable or suggested, I gave up. Days later I noticed a strange phenomenon. The “link” light on my USB wireless networking adapter was lit even though the computer had been shut down for days. I removed it from the system and everything seemed hunky dory. So I plugged it back in and things went batty again.

I blame the NSA who obviously replaced my old adapter with a new one.