Here are some links for configuring Mac Mail and Outlook It’s not hard to find Google’s instructions for many other email clients.

Need to back up your laptop files or stash some large files someplace? Check SteamLoad out. They are offering 25gb of storage. They provide a web interface for downloading and uploading and a downloadable PC application for file synchronization.

Pando makes it easy to send a large file, such as a video, over the Internet. It uses BitTorrent technology. I tried an earlier version of Pando, which was tied to email, but didn’t find it natural to use. The new version, which sports additional interfaces, is quite easy to use.

Both the sender and the receiver need to install a Pando client, but it runs on Macs and PCs and is very easy (and safe) to install.

It sounded like science fiction the first time I heard about it: Windows Vista includes a feature called ReadyBoost that lets you use a USB 2.0-based flash memory device–typically a USB memory key–to speed up the performance of virtually any Vista PC.

This is pretty amazing. Take a flash drive, plug in into a USB port, and expand the available memory (that’s RAM, not storage) without having to open up your PC.

It also looks like Vista will ship in the coming months. Finally.

Microsoft has released Live Writer as part of their Windows Live suite. It’s a program that allows bloggers to compose entries, then publish them to their blogs. It’s much like Qumana. I wrote about Qumana here and here.

I’m composing this entry in Live Writer. Let’s see how it looks!

I don’t like paying for anti-virus software. Heck, I don’t really like paying for software, even though I once made a living off a piece of software.

I’ve been using a free anti-virus program called Anti-Vir on our ancient family PC for years. It seems to do the job, but I hesitate to recommend it to friends because it doesn’t automatically update itself (like the not-free have been doing for years) and many people who use computers can’t be bothered to update.

AOL has just started offering Active Virus Shield, an anti-virus program that is probably good enough and features automatic update. It’s a free download. I just freely downloaded it and installed it on the family PC (after uninstalling Anti-Vir). You must provide an email address on the download page. AOL sends an activation code to that address. Towards the end of the install, you’re prompted for the code. After you’re done with all that nonesense and you’ve completed the install, you have to reboot your computer. It’s somewhat annoying, but I think McAfee and Symantec manage to be just as annoying.

I’m running the full-scan now and I just noticed a little click box, clicked on by default, that reads “Pause virus scan when CPU is busy with other applications.” Good.

The full scan is chugging along. It’ll take a long time on this old PC. Oh, another interesting checkbox, clicked off by default, “Do shut down this computer when finished.” That can be useful.

There are a few programs out there that index the contents of your PC hard drive for quick search. [Mac users who are running Tiger have Spotlight; PC users will eventually have something similar, when Vista makes its way onto their PCs.] I used Google Desktop for a while. It serves up the contents of your drive in the same way that the Google search engine serves up the contents of the Internet, in your browser. It’s an elegant solution, but wasn’t a natural fit for me.

After I got my tablet PC, I spent a little time looking into alternatives and found one I like very much. It’s called Copernic and it’s a free download.  It doesn’t use your browser to display search results; it puts up its own window where it is easy to narrow the search by category — to email, files, contacts, pictures, etc. It is also straightforward to refine the search. The search results are very well organized and easy to follow. You can even take actions on some of what it finds. For example, when I search through email, I inevitably end up looking through some garbage. I can delete those emails from the Copernic window. That’s useful.

By default, the part of Copernic that is busy indexing and reindexing the contents of your hard drive suspends itself when the computer is active, watiing until things have been quiet for 2 minutes before resuming. I wish all the scanners and indexers behaved so well. It also installs a little search box in the task bar. In general, I find the interface very natural.

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Like many students and teachers at Emma Willard, I’m going to be spending a fair amount of time computing on a Tablet PC.  

During the last 2 or 3 years, I’ve spent about 90% of my computing time on one of two Macs.  My home computer is an iBook.  I’ve been taking it into work from time to time, mainly to take notes at meetings.  At work, my primary computer has been an 6-year old G4 tower.  I’ve also been using an old PC laptop (with a dead battery) for network administrative tasks and to respond to Outlook meeting invitations (long story).

The new Tablet PC has replaced the old PC laptop.   I’m in the process of rearranging my desk so that the Tablet will be front and center, my primary device.  I’ll use the G4 for Mac-only applications.  That will make me more 50/50: mainly PC at work and mainly Mac at home.

Adjustments: Part I

So now I’m trying to make the Tablet PC comfortable, which for me can mean more Mac-like, but not generally.   I customize my Mac interface a lot, too.  Part of what prompts me to make changes is that I use many applications and I usually have several applications open at once.   I want to be able to find things quickly and figure out the state of my computer quickly. 

Among the changes I’ve made:

1. Expanded the Task Bar to double height and told it
   1. Not to hide inactive icons
   2. Show Quick Launch. 
   3. Not to group similar taskbar buttons
2. Started populating the Quick Launch toolbar with the programs that I call frequently:  Firefox, Outlook, SharpReader (my RSS Reader), etc.  The Quick Launch toolbar comes with a very important icon that, when clicked, minimizes every window to the Task Bar.   I don’t know how Windows users can live without that button.   It’s not only a time-saver, it can be used to fix the not uncommon situation where a window that needs attention ends up hidden underneath other windows.  Clearing the screen, then maximizing the windows often reveals the hidden bugger.
3. Cleared nearly every icon off the desktop by either deleting them or moving them to the Quick Launch area.   I hate having to look for things under things.
4. One of the most broken parts of the Windows interface is the All Programs list the Start Menu.  In order to invoke a program that isn’t available via Quick Launch or desktop shortcut, users have to click on the Start Menu (or press the Start Menu key), then move their mouse to All Programs (or use arrow keys), then search through what can be a very long and unordered list.  I brought some order to that list by right-clicking on the expanded All Programs menu and choosing "Sort by name", which helped, although even a sorted list segregates the groups from the singletons.  Try it, you’ll see what I mean.  It’s dumb.  I also used tricks (that require Administrative access and some knowledge of the file system to pull off) to radically shorten the All Programs list.  I created two groups (actually folders) within All Programs, Seldom Used and Quick Launch, and moved most of the shortcuts into one of those two folders.  Quick Launch holds those items that I can call from the Quick Launch toolbar. After ruthlessly altering the list,  I install a tool that insures I’ll hardly ever have to look at it.
5. I installed Launchy.  I plan to blog about Launchy later.  In a nutshell,  Launchy presents a search box.  You type a few letters into the box, such as "pai",  and it responds with a list of the programs whose names contains those letters, including Microsoft Paint, which is what I had in mind.  You choose the one you want and it launches it for you.  Launchy looks in your Start Menu for program names. Interestingly,  Vista, the soon-to-be-released successor to Microsoft Windows XP, which have something like Launchy built into the Start Menu.

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