923
Hello, and a question about OS X email clients
Mr. Fun
Applelinks Website Design
Sugar water[/url]


___


Hello, and a question about OS X email clients

From Heather Anne

I was reading your 2003 review of the different email clients for the Mac and I tried several of them, none seem to do what I am looking for so I am hoping that you will have the time to respond. I am new to the Mac, I was a Windows user for 10 years *gasp*. I am not proud of it and had wanted to switch for some time, Linux was not an option for me as I work with a lot of mailing lists and do graphics in Macromedia Fireworks which we tried to run in Windows emulators several times on my husband's Linux box, and with several different flavors of Linux. Anyway, we got our tax return and went out and got me a Mac. The only M$ product left in the house (in use) is my 3 button Intellimouse.

All of that said, I was very used to Outlook Express which does not run under OSX (I do not have Classic support for some reason, I assume I would have to buy OS9 for that?) I love Mac Mail BUT it does not do what I want it to do... I would like better display of HTML messages and also the ability to create an HTML signature to insert into my outgoing emails. Do you know which of the email clients you listed can do this for me? Sorry for the long winded email. I hope I have not wasted your time and I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,
Heather Anne

___

Hi Heather Anne;

First, welcome to the Mac community!

You didn't say what sort of Mac you have. I'm assuming that it's a recent model, and most Macs shipped in the past year or so will not boot directly into OS 9, but Classic Mode should work in OS X. If it doesn't, something is out of whack. OS 9 is installed when you reinstall the software from the restore CDs that shipped with your Mac.

As for email clients,
Eudora
http://www.eudora.com
and
Magellan 3.5
http://www.makienterprise.com/magellan/magellan.html

both support html mail. Either can be downloaded as a free trial.

I'm not sure about Mozilla Thunderbird, but it's freeware and perhaps worth a look.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/

Or you could hold your nose and use Outlook Express or Entourage for Mac.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/

Charles

___

Re: Hello, and a question about OSX email clients

From Heather Anne

Hello Charles,

Thank you for your reply, I have a 17 inch iMac G4, with a 1.25 GHZ processor. We bought a refurbished model for 300.00 less and purchased the Apple Care Protection Plan.

I was skimming one of the magazines I bought about 4 days before I got my iMac (I bought an issue of machome, Mac Addict and Mac World). It says the following:

Newer Macintoshes do not boot into OS9. The OSX installer can install support for Classic though. Startup with the computer's Startup and Restore Disc 1 and follow the instructions in the installer.

I assume this is what you are trying to tell me to do as well.

I tried Entourage for about 10 minutes, it is terribly bloated and not very pretty at all. It did not fit the overall look of the iMac desktop. Thunderbird is a great email program but it has problems with SMTP, for example, I have 3 email addresses on heatheranne.org, it uses the same outgoing sever for all 3, which is the main one, and uses that login and password for all 3. In other words, if I send an email from one it appears to come from the main account, no matter what I do. It works fantastic if all of your email addresses reside on different domains, like one on comcast, one on your domain, one on mac.com, and say another on Yahoo or something, but if you have multiple addresses on one domain it will send from all the accounts using the first one you enter. Otherwise, I love the program.

I would prefer to use Outlook Express, I know, I know, Microsoft is evil but I guess this is one of my weaknesses having come from the Microsoft Windows platform. I am hoping Outlook Express 5 for the Mac is very similar to the version for Windows. Even on Windows I tried to escape OE several times by trying many different email clients but always wound up back at OE, mostly because of the way it handles attachments, and html signatures. Unfortunately no other email program I played with compared in those areas.

I thank you for your time and your reply, it was very kind of you, as I assume you get many people with technical questions that can sometimes be aggravating. I used to be that person with Windows. I did not write for an ezine or an online forum but everyone knew I could figure out most problems, and I had tons of people (ok, maybe not tons but at least 5-10 a day) asking me how to remove spyware, or how they could fix IE or how to do html even. It drove me bonkers, so I want to let you know I do appreciate you taking the time to answer.

Sincerely,
Heather Anne

___

Hi again Heather Anne;

Your iMac definitely should have had OS 9 installed with OS X for Classic Mode. What happens when you open the Classic System Preferences panel and try to start Classic?

Yeah; that smtp server issue is Thunderbird's biggest shortcoming, IMHO. Eudora, which is my favorite email client, lets you set up completely individual accounts with separate smtp servers assigned respectively. I think you could paste an html signature into Eudora (haven't tried it) and attachments are just a matter of dragging a file into the message header or out of the footer.

But hey, if Outlook Express suits you, go for it. At least it's free, so M$ doesn't get any of your cash. I don't like it much. Having all of my email archives stored in one big corruptible proprietary file would give me the willies. the mbox email files used by Eudora, Mail, Thunderbird, and others can be opened with a text editor in a pinch.

Charles

Mr. Fun

Dear Mr. Moore,

Re: Your latest news roundup, you said:

Mr. Fun, 34, who who became Apple Singapore's general manager last year, is quoted commenting:

"'If I hadn't joined Apple, I wouldn't have found out that Macintosh products were so easy to use. They're so intuitive. And because the Mac OS X (operating system) is Unix-based, document compatibility with other systems is 100 per cent,'"

"Now that Mr Fun is a Mac user, he declared that he'll never use anything else. What do you expect? Once a Mac user, always a Mac user."

My Mac is a tool for me. Nothing more, nothing less. Even though I consider it easier to use than a PC, I am still very frustrated with how difficult it is to do simple tasks on my Mac. One example: When my PC friends send me photos via email, I can only open about 70% of them. They say the same thing about receiving mail from me. If that is true, then who has the "easier to use" machine? My Mac friends have no problem with my email photos, & my PC friends have no problem seeing PC emailed photos. I use mac.com, as well as AOL. Makes no difference which email address I use, or what they use, for that matter.

"100% compatibility?" I think not -- in either direction. No matter what anyone says, either computer operating systems are still far too complex, or I am "over the hill"? My older Macs seemed far easier to use, even though emails, file transfers, etc. were, at best, less reliable.

Maybe there is hope for the future, but until then, even hooking up my Lombard running 9.0 to my 17" iMac running 10.2.8 via Airport is frustrating. (Never did get it to work.) Apple says I should upgrade my Lombard. But then, my wife's Family Tree Maker software is useless. Over 2,600 records!

I just purchased Reunion 8 and will attempt to load her FTM software into GEDCOM, but my friends state that even GEDCOM is not that reliable. If I fail, I guess I'll spend the rest of my nights on the couch, and my wife will be stuck with OS 9 forever, as FTM no longer supports the Mac! Aren't computers great? After all, they are "so easy to use!"

Sorry I took up so much of your time, and feel free to chop away at my gripes.

Thanks, WF

___

Hi WF;

Sorry to hear about your problems. I'm wondering which photo/graphics file formats you're having difficulty sharing. This isn't really an OS compatibility issue so much as a file format compatibility issue.

There is a shareware program called GraphicsConverter, that can open almost any graphics format and save it as any other graphics format. Both Mac and PC popular formats are supported. Might be worth a try. You could save photos in a PC-friendly format before sending them off, and open whatever you receive.

To get your Lombard to support Airport, you need a wireless adapter card. A couple of inexpensive ones can be found
here and here.

Have you tried running Family Tree Maker in Classic Mode in OS X? I have encountered very few OS 9 apps that don't work fine in Classic Mode.

Hope this helps.
Charles





Applelinks Website Design

From murr

I used to have Applelinks as my homepage but no longer. I find the re-work of the site pretty abominable. There is way too much visual text garbage. You don't have to tell readers something is in "categories" ...that is understood. Then you compound the problem by telling us column/column -abacus/column-absurd notion/column ....on and on ..."Column" is a category title ...leave it at that and then just use the separate titles for the individual "columns". Secondly, I now have to drill down and down to find out what topics are in each front page centred item. I used to see the various topics up front and could chose to look based upon that ...Now I waste time and can't be bothered searching underneath.

Maybe you have heard all this before ....if so, why the hell haven't you changed it? Please re-think this betterer!

___

Hi Murr;

Have you tried clicking the "Original Applelinks" link (second item in the homepage left column)? That will give you the content in the old Applelinks format.

Charles





Sugar water

From Erica Marceau

I think you're going a little overboard by saying
"Flavored sugar-water is not *quite* as deadly as tobacco, but it's right up there among harmful substances people take into their bodies."

The problem with soft drinks is not that they're not healthy but because people tend to drink soft drinks much as they would water. The problem with soft drinks is not the quality of the soft drinks themselves but now people incorporate soft drinks into their diet. Put another way, if people drank a can a day, I don't think there'd be any problem but when people are drinking can after can then there can be a problem. I hardly think the obesity and diabetics problem can be blamed on soft drinks but on irresponsible parents who let their children eat and drink whatever they want to. Good grief, where have people's common sense gone to? What's so hard about telling your kid to drink fruit juice instead?

Can you leave soft drinks alone for those of us who would occasionally like to have one?

___

Hi Erica;

I agree with you about the parental responsibility part. but what are soft drink machines doing in schools where there is no parental supervision?

Sorry, but soft drinks *are* essentially unhealthy. Sugar is bad and sugar substitutes are bad too for a whole different set of reasons. Fruit juice is no panacea either. Fructose is not as harmful as refined sucrose, but it's still sugar, and highly concentrated in fruit juice, some of which is also sweetened (!?) with sugar.

Sugar is actually an anti-nutrient; in that it uses up nutrients from the body's reserves to metabolize it and contributes nothing except empty calories. You would starve to death faster eating a diet of pure sugar than you would eating nothing at all. And sugar is implicated in a dismaying variety of diseases.

According to Lynne Melcombe, author of the recent book "Health Hazards of White Sugar," refined sugar stresses the body's metabolism, disrupts digestion, wreaks havoc in the brain, and is associated with distempers ranging through dental decay, obesity, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, asthma, insomnia, menstrual irregularities, osteoporosis, and sugar addiction.

Actually, the problem is not limited to obvious sugars. Any processed simple carbohydrate, such as in refined flour products like white bread, white pasta, baked goods and pastries, or in white rice, are quickly metabolized into simple sugars that disrupt your body's glucose and fat regulatory systems.

Once sugar reaches the intestines, it enters the bloodstream at a rate of about 32 calories per minute -- far more energy than the body can utilize, even under heavy physical exercise. Sugar consequently has a blitzkrieg effect on the body's glucose regulating system. The pancreas is stimulated to release a large shot of insulin in response to what it senses as an emergency. In turn, the liver is stimulated to convert too much glucose into glycogen, ironically resulting in hypoglycemia -- “low blood sugar” -- from eating sugar, creating a craving for yet more sugar, the classic addictive cycle. These extreme pendulum swings eventually overstress both the pancreas and the liver.

A century ago the average North American ate about 30 pounds (13 kilograms) of sugar annually, Today it's around 153 pounds (70 kilograms). Diabetes -- severe pancreatic malfunction -- is largely a disease of sugar eaters. It is extremely rare among peoples who eat traditional diets based mainly on grains, vegetables, legumes, and fruit. However, when such people adopt a standard Western diet high in sugar, meat, refined flour, and processed food, the rate of diabetes (and other degenerative diseases) skyrockets.

"Sugar is a socially acceptable addiction," observes Nancy Appleton, a clinical nutritionist and author of "Lick the Sugar Habit." Appleton also believes sugar contributes to a variety of degenerative diseases including diabetes, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, cancer and heart disease. Sugar is also suspected of contributing to obesity, skin problems, gastric and peptic ulcers, and psychological disorders. A US Department of Agriculture study indicated that drinking soda pop may cause the body to lose calcium and phosphorus, two elements essential for strong bones. New York Times food writer Jane Brody argues that "sugars are undoubtedly a major factor in the precipitous rise in obesity among both children and adults."

The best policy is to cut out eating these "foods" entirely. If you can't manage that, cut down. The sweet life can be a short one.

Off soapbox

(One of the other journalistic hats I wear ia as a magazine and newspaper feature writer on health and wellness issues)

Charles


***



Charles W. Moore


Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management.

If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

CM

Tags: MooresMailBag ï

(0) Trackbacks ï

Login † or † Register † †