I switched to Firefox because--Solved

[Philippe L. Balmanno]

I have to agree. I keep a spare box just to install and play with different
distros of linux on. I am waiting for the day when I can switch customers
over to a linux desktop. It's not here yet. Can you imagine the average
user, opening a box, setting up the computer, hooking up a cable/DSL/dial up
internet connection, and downloading the latest updates for their distro. I
can't either. Now what happens when they pop into the local electronics
store and purchase that brand new HP photo printer, Kodak camera and quite
realistically want to use their computer to edit and print their pictures.
I'm sure most of the people reading this could make this work after a few
days of trail and error, downloading and compiling drivers etc. 99% of
computer users couldn't do this with linux but could muddle through with
windows.

Kerry Brown
KDB Systems

"I'm sure most of the people reading this could make this work after a
few days of trail and error" --- You mean excruciating pain and
suffering don't you (for the average home user even some IT people are
in a daze with Linux/Unix like-Mac OSX)? Yet some are falling for the
cheap Linspire series of PCs available at wal-mart, staples etc. Little
are they aware of the issue of hardware compatibility and upgrading
kernels decompressing .tar files and compiling new builds.

 

[Alias]

| Alias wrote:
|
| > Thunderbird has limitations that make it totally useless for my
business.
|
| I'm interested as to what those might be?
|

I send out precreated emails in HTML. I send about 100 a day. I have created
these emails using Front Page and have them as signatures in OE. I receive
leads of people interested in my services and to send them an email I just
hit Tab+Enter to click on their email address and open a new email and then
hit Alt+I/Signatures and scroll down to the signature that I want to use for
this particular lead's needs and hit Enter, type in the lead's name and I
hit Ctrl+Enter and off it goes. I have 24 signatures that I use for this
purpose.

 

[Leythos]

I have to agree. I keep a spare box just to install and play with different
distros of linux on. I am waiting for the day when I can switch customers
over to a linux desktop. It's not here yet. Can you imagine the average

Take a look at Red Hat Fedora Core 3. I find that it's painless, installed
perfectly on all my test systems (Laptop, 3 workstations, and a Dual
P3/1Ghz Compaq ML350 server). I've also found that it works perfectly with
my Xerox 8400B wax thermal printer and even my HP DC4800 Camera.

user, opening a box, setting up the computer, hooking up a
cable/DSL/dial up internet connection, and downloading the latest
updates for their distro. I can't either. Now what happens when they pop
into the local electronics store and purchase that brand new HP photo
printer, Kodak camera and quite realistically want to use their computer
to edit and print their pictures. I'm sure most of the people reading
this could make this work after a few days of trail and error,
downloading and compiling drivers etc. 99% of computer users couldn't do
this with linux but could muddle through with windows.

Yea, unfortunately when it comes to the newer hardware Linux will be
lacking with new drivers for a while - this is only a matter of economics,
as it becomes more Windows like vendors will start producing more drivers
up front.

I have a BUNCH of Windows workstations and Servers in my home and my
business is based on the support and design of secure MS solutions, and
I'm quite happy with the ability to secure them with the tools available
to the masses.

At the same time I started looking for a generic replacement for Windows
that was reasonably secure out of the box and simple enough for my Mother
In-Law to install from scratch - I tried SUSE 9.1 Personal, Mandrake 10.0
and Fedora Core 3, FC3 is the only one I consider a replacement for
Windows as it ship.

Except for my Firewall software I've not used my Windows XP Sp2 box in
almost 5 days now (the FW management software only comes with a Win GUI).
I love how Evolution works with my Exchange server and how, if needed, I
can run CrossOver and install Office XP on my Linux box.

I'm looking at it now for a small office file server where Windows 2003
Standard for under 10 users is just to expensive.

 

[Leythos]

Little
are they aware of the issue of hardware compatibility and upgrading
kernels decompressing .tar files and compiling new builds.

I forgot to mention - Fedora Core 3 comes with a Automatic Update feature
that looks for Updates and lets you know they are available. No need to
compile or use tar files. It's as easy as Windows XP.

 

[Philippe L. Balmanno]

I forgot to mention - Fedora Core 3 comes with a Automatic Update feature
that looks for Updates and lets you know they are available. No need to
compile or use tar files. It's as easy as Windows XP.

This is like Linspires's CNR service/program to update it and download
other software

 

[Vanguard]

I agree it isn't ignorance if you are lucky. I changed because I
wanted speed and no more hang ups/stalls when marking news groups as
read. For example when I subscribe to a new news group OE downloads
headers and after reviewing the headers I usually mark the news group
as read.

Sounds like you need to compact your .dbx files. Also, the more records
you keep then the slower OE will be in enumerating new records,
accessing them, and changing their status. Thunderbird may indeed be
quicker in its database mechanism but basically it sounds like you've
become a pig and let your .dbx files for Outlook Express get excessively
huge. It is doubtful that you need any records over a month old and
probably not even over 2 weeks old. You can Google Groups for old
articles. Define a rule to delete messages that are over N days old.
It won't apply when you download new messages but occasionally you
should run it manually to mark old items with a status of deleted. Then
run a compact to purge the delete-marked items from the database files.
When OE gets slow, it is because it has to do a lot of reindexing.

IE requires too many additional add-ins for pop-up blockers and too
many people have created these self installing search toolbars and not
one of these have attached themselves to Firefox.

Yet the 3rd party add-ins to IE for popup blocking surpass what Firefox
can manage to avoid. Take a look at PopUpCop which provides much more
than just popup blocking. "Too many additional add-ins for pop-up
blockers"? You make it sound like you need a plural of popup blockers.
Just one suffices and obviously you don't want same-function utilities
interferring with each other. "Self-installing search toolbars"? Well,
if you are stupid enough to go opening any attachment you get in an
e-mail, downloading just any freebie utility you happen to find without
researching it, not configuring IE to prompt you for ActiveX downloads,
and not saving a disk image to provide for recovery before installing
software from an unknown and untrusted source then that was your choice
to engage in unsafe hex. No browser can overcome the stupidity of its
user.

Yeah, Firefox doesn't support ActiveX. And, of course, no one could
ever manage to go into IE's advanced options and disable ActiveX
downloads and execution, either, or just configure IE to prompt when an
AX download is requested. Yeah, right. I'm not saying Firefox isn't a
good browser (except that users often complain about difficulties after
trying to uninstall it, so it ranks with the old versions of Netscape
when they were in a browser war with Microsoft about a decade ago), but
many of the arguments are pretty stupid or misleading. Most Firefox
users don't even realize all the bugs being reported and worked on for
that product ()(http://snipurl.com/firefox_bugs_all), and that list is
from a much smaller community of users and enthusiasts along with being
a much less targeted browser by hackers.

 

[Vanguard]

AV software increases the cost of ownership. Linux and Mac OS X do
not require AV software. Windows is just a high maintenance operating
system when computer users only want to use their system and not
always maintain it and do monthly updates. No matter what AV software
used in Windows, its no where near 100% effective.

Yeah, that's why Sophos and other developers produce anti-virus products
for Linux and Mac because obviously they want to just waste their
resources without any hope of generating revenue on those Linux and Mac
versions of their product to offset their costs to produce it. Everyone
is in business to go out of business, uh huh. And, of course, root kits
surely must have started on the Windows platform and are unheard of on
Linux.

If you are going to bash a product in an attempt to proselytize your
personal choices, at least get the facts straight.

 

[Philippe L. Balmanno]

Sounds like you need to compact your .dbx files. Also, the more records
you keep then the slower OE will be in enumerating new records,
accessing them, and changing their status. Thunderbird may indeed be
quicker in its database mechanism but basically it sounds like you've
become a pig and let your .dbx files for Outlook Express get excessively
huge. It is doubtful that you need any records over a month old and
probably not even over 2 weeks old. You can Google Groups for old
articles. Define a rule to delete messages that are over N days old. It
won't apply when you download new messages but occasionally you should
run it manually to mark old items with a status of deleted. Then run a
compact to purge the delete-marked items from the database files. When
OE gets slow, it is because it has to do a lot of reindexing.



Yet the 3rd party add-ins to IE for popup blocking surpass what Firefox
can manage to avoid. Take a look at PopUpCop which provides much more
than just popup blocking. "Too many additional add-ins for pop-up
blockers"? You make it sound like you need a plural of popup blockers.
Just one suffices and obviously you don't want same-function utilities
interferring with each other. "Self-installing search toolbars"? Well,
if you are stupid enough to go opening any attachment you get in an
e-mail, downloading just any freebie utility you happen to find without
researching it, not configuring IE to prompt you for ActiveX downloads,
and not saving a disk image to provide for recovery before installing
software from an unknown and untrusted source then that was your choice
to engage in unsafe hex. No browser can overcome the stupidity of its
user.

Yeah, Firefox doesn't support ActiveX. And, of course, no one could
ever manage to go into IE's advanced options and disable ActiveX
downloads and execution, either, or just configure IE to prompt when an
AX download is requested. Yeah, right. I'm not saying Firefox isn't a
good browser (except that users often complain about difficulties after
trying to uninstall it, so it ranks with the old versions of Netscape
when they were in a browser war with Microsoft about a decade ago), but
many of the arguments are pretty stupid or misleading. Most Firefox
users don't even realize all the bugs being reported and worked on for
that product ()(http://snipurl.com/firefox_bugs_all), and that list is
from a much smaller community of users and enthusiasts along with being
a much less targeted browser by hackers.

"Sounds like you need to compact your .dbx files."

..dbx was never an issue as I have had no need to store messages.
Talking about my personnal PC. And my habits were read it delete etc...
NG were periodically filtered so anything over >30 days got deleted and
was compacted monthly.

"it sounds like you've become a pig and let your .dbx files for Outlook
Express get excessively huge."

Too presumptious and insulting to boot, there's no piggy here.

 

[Vanguard]

Can you imagine the average user, opening a box, setting up the
computer, hooking up a cable/DSL/dial up internet connection, and
downloading the latest updates for their distro.

Already here. Walmart sells Linux boxes; see
http://snipurl.com/bbc_walmart and http://snipurl.com/cnet_walmart. You
have to wonder how much lower is the IQ of folks visiting Walmart then
those walking into computer store or purchasing parts online. For those
that bitch about a consumer-grade and consumer-oriented operating system
(aka Windows), just relish in pointing them at Linux where they'll
really get an education if only in more easily how they can screw up
their system since it is unlikely they will educate themselves on the
product since they didn't bother to educate themselves on Windows.

 

[Vanguard]

On 2/6/2005 10:15 AM, Alias:

Norton products have worsen over the years

People tend to forget that Symantec is a software *publisher*, not a
developer. They buy products (can you recall a Symantec product that
they didn't get from somewhere else?). They infuse just enough
development effort to maintain saleability of the product. However, the
product will wane in robustness, stability, and timeliness over time
because, well, they are a *publisher*. Their business goals as a
publisher is different than for a developer. When Symantec buys
something new then figure in about 3 years to be looking elsewhere for a
better replacement.

 

[Kerry Brown]

I forgot to mention - Fedora Core 3 comes with a Automatic Update feature

that looks for Updates and lets you know they are available. No need to
compile or use tar files. It's as easy as Windows XP.

--

I currently have FC3 on the "play" box. I did a generic install picking all
the default choices. It installed, connected to the internet out of the box.
I could surf, get email etc. The automatic update feature however didn't
work. It took me several hours to figure it out. Once I got it working it
took a couple of days of playing in my spare time to figure out which
updates were required and make sure they were installed. To access some
windows shares took another couple of days of spare time to get it working
seamlessly. As a test I phoned my ISP to see if I could get some help
configuring email. They don't support linux, had no idea what FC3 was. I
checked Epson's site for driver's for a Stylus C82 - don't exist. Couldn't
configure FC3 to access my C82. It's connected to a WinXP machine. If it was
on a linux machine it might have been doable but who knows for sure? I liked
FC3 and am thinking about using it on my every day box. I would not
recommend it for any of my customers as a desktop. The support time would
kill my business.

Kerry Brown
KDB Systems

 

[Mark]

You need to reconfigure Outlook Express. Obviously you do not have it
configured to use the Restricted Sites security zone and also ensured
that the Restricted Sites security zone is set to its High setting. That
eliminates file and font downloads, ActiveX downloads, running any local
ActiveX controls already downloaded, disables all scripting, disables
copying to/from clipboard, and all other potentially abused features of
HTML-formatted content.

How does one configure Outlook Express to use the Restricted Zone?

Of course, if you are using Outlook Express for newsgroups, why the hell
haven't you configured it to read ALL messages in plain-text format?

Although I primarily use Mozilla products, I also do run Outlook Express
6, but very minimal. I do have Outlook Express set to read all messages
in plain text.

 

[Leythos]

I currently have FC3 on the "play" box. I did a generic install picking all
the default choices. It installed, connected to the internet out of the box.
I could surf, get email etc. The automatic update feature however didn't
work. It took me several hours to figure it out. Once I got it working it
took a couple of days of playing in my spare time to figure out which
updates were required and make sure they were installed. To access some

That's real strange, I did a wipe/reinstall 5 days ago - took 90 minutes
to do the install and 2 hours to download and install (over my 4mbps
connection) all the updates - I didn't question them, I just selected and
installed ALL of them. Been working fine since.

windows shares took another couple of days of spare time to get it
working seamlessly. As a test I phoned my ISP to see if I could get some

I still don't have my shares on the 2003 server accessible - I can get to
them, see the files, navigate folders, but I get an error everytime I
double click one.

help configuring email. They don't support linux, had no idea what FC3
was. I checked Epson's site for driver's for a Stylus C82 - don't exist.

ISP's don't support anything other than Netscape and Outlook Express, they
don't even support Outlook. If you didn't already know the POP/SMTP server
and the account name you could have looked at your non-play computer.
Between Thunderbird and Evolution there are easier to setup than Outlook
Express for even home users.

Couldn't configure FC3 to access my C82. It's connected to a WinXP
machine. If it was on a linux machine it might have been doable but who
knows for sure? I liked FC3 and am thinking about using it on my every

I have my printers sitting on Network Printer Servers, not on computers as
shares, it was easy to set them up with the printer interface - just like
doing a Network Printer on XP/2000/2003. I don't know about drivers, I try
and only buy PostScript based printers, so it doesn't really matter if
there is a specific driver or not - but there was a driver for my Xerox
8400B color wax printer.

day box. I would not recommend it for any of my customers as a desktop.
The support time would kill my business.

That's my issue - Until I can learn enough to support it as well/quickly
as I do the Windows based machines I can't roll it out to the desktop.
Now, for servers, that's another story - a simple file server seems to be
a breeze and the cost is right.

 

[Alias]

| "it sounds like you've become a pig and let your .dbx files for Outlook
| Express get excessively huge."
|
| Too presumptious and insulting to boot, there's no piggy here.

Just curious, have you taken a look at your .dbx files to see how large they
are?

 

[Gordon]

| Alias wrote:
|
| > Thunderbird has limitations that make it totally useless for my
business.
|
| I'm interested as to what those might be?
|

I send out precreated emails in HTML. I send about 100 a day. I have created
these emails using Front Page and have them as signatures in OE. I receive
leads of people interested in my services and to send them an email I just
hit Tab+Enter to click on their email address and open a new email and then
hit Alt+I/Signatures and scroll down to the signature that I want to use for
this particular lead's needs and hit Enter, type in the lead's name and I
hit Ctrl+Enter and off it goes. I have 24 signatures that I use for this
purpose.

That's an interesting usage. TBird has an extension that is similar but
it's only 10 sigs and is not HTML (as far as I know....)

 

[Alias]

|
| How does one configure Outlook Express to use the
| Restricted Zone?

Tools/Options/Security. You can choose between Internet Zone and Restricted,
which, if I recall correctly, is chosen by default.

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP]

Tools/Options/Security. You can choose between Internet Zone and
Restricted, which, if I recall correctly, is chosen by default.

Yes, by default OE is in the Restricted zone.

--
Frank Saunders, MS-MVP, IE/OE
Please respond in Newsgroup only. Do not send email
http://www.fjsmjs.com
Protect your PC
http://www.microsoft.com./athome/security/protect/default.aspx
http://defendingyourmachine.blogspot.com/

 

[Philippe L. Balmanno]

| "it sounds like you've become a pig and let your .dbx files for Outlook
| Express get excessively huge."
|
| Too presumptious and insulting to boot, there's no piggy here.

Just curious, have you taken a look at your .dbx files to see how large they
are?

Yes they are:
Deleted Items.dbx 139KB
Drafts.dbx 75KB
Folders.dbx 5,769KB
Inbox.dbx 137KB
microsoft.public.excel.worksheet.functions.dbx 9,547KB
Norton AntiSpam Folder.dbx 139KB
Offline.dbx 10KB
Outbox.dbx 59KB
Pop3uidl.dbx 10KB
all in all very reasonable and not large.

 

[Guest]

When I said I was reluctanct to get rid of IE6, I meant stop using it.
Microsoft usually comes out on top. I found that as text size increase in
Firefox it wraps and there is no need to laterally scroll. This is not the
case with IE6.

 

[Kerry Brown]

I'm looking at it now for a small office file server where Windows 2003

Standard for under 10 users is just to expensive.

I keep recommending linux servers as an alternative for my customers. So far
none of them has done it. They all want to know who will service it if I'm
not available. Cost of aquisition is not the most significant factor for
them. Ongoing support costs and availabilty of support are their main
concerns. As/if/when linux becomes more popular I am sure the cost of
aquisition will become a factor.

For under ten users a WinXP Pro machine dedicated to serving files works
pretty good. It can be a pain making sure local accounts match etc. but once
set up it's OK. It has the bonus of being able to fix a lot of problems with
a phone call. If they have at least one person who has used Windows explorer
a lot of things can be accomplished with a phone call. Can you imagine
getting a relatively inexperienced user to edit a smb.conf file over the
phone and having it work?

Kerry Brown
KDB Systems


Kerry Brown
KDB Systems