Jules Jones

 So this weekend my computer offered to upgrade itself to Windows 11. I let it go ahead, because there shouldn't be anything left on my current laptop that requires much swearing and effort to get to work with newer iterations (the shift from XP to 8 was... interesting).

Not entirely convinced so far. Some of this is just a matter of getting used to it, but so far there's one change that is seriously annoying. I'm used to right-clicking on the tool bar to get a menu that allows me to go to the desktop with one more click. That doesn't work any more. Off to Edge to find out how to fix this. It turns out that one is now expected to use a tiny bit of tool bar at the far right. Yes, it may be a single click rather than two. It's also a lot harder to hit with the mouse, at least if you have flaky hands.

Don't like the new start menu, since it's lost the ability to put shortcuts into named groups. I found that extremely useful, and am sad to see it go, but at least the "you will lose this facility" list before you click "accept" warned about this. I've gone and deleted various apps that I Do Not Want. I am an Old and do not want TikTok, FaceBook, and Instagram. I've deleted Amazon Prime, mostly to avoid temptation, and Disney because I'm not likely to want it, even if it isn't on the "fire and sword" list.

I expect it will have found new and exciting ways to annoy me, because it's Windows. But so far it doesn't seem to have broken anything badly.

Hello from Windows 10. It has been an *interesting* experience, but that is mostly the fault of my new WD backup drive and its flaky software. I see a purchase of real backup software in my future.

I isntalled over the old Win 8.1 install, which may or may not have been a mistake - it took a couple of boot cycles before the machine condescended to work at a sane speed (although still a little slow even now). Thunderbird and Firefox seem to be okay, but the expedition to Planet Lotus will have to wait until tomorrow. I hold high hopes, as it has at least loaded the Smartsuite toolbar.

I've been using Lotus Smartsuite since version 3.1. I recognise that sooner or later I will have to abandon it, but I want access to it for a while in case there are any files I've forgotten to convert to rtf etc. A quick Google found the following thread:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/windows-8-load-lotus-smartsuite-981/9d658644-6708-4217-a300-a7100372fd96?auth=1

I stuck the CD in the drive, and after a bit of faffing about found that while trying to run the msi file didn't get anywhere, right click on "setup.exe" and "run as administrator", with a side-order of "troubleshoot incompatibility", did the trick. Haven't actually tried doing anything other than opening Word Pro to check that it would indeed open, but I appear to have access to the software on the Win8.1 box.

My primary email client is Turnpike, and has been since I bought my first internet connection 17 years ago. Unfortunately Demon stopped developing it a long time ago, and amongst other things it now effectively requires stunnel as an add-on to allow it to send mail in this cold, hard world of secure login. It is still a superb email client for collecting and reading mail off-line, but with the advent of the Win 8.1 box it's time to give in and use a current email client. Threads in demon.internet.support.turnpike suggest that it *is* possible to install Turnpike on at least the 32-bit version, but as it would involve a lot of fiddling, plus use of stunnel, I'm moving to Thunderbird. That means moving my mailspool, oh joy. I want to go with imap, although exporting in Berkeley mailbox format and importing into Thunderbird is also an option.

I've spent the last two days reading threads in d.i.s.t, discovering that I was still on v3.something of Thunderbird on the XP box and upgrading, and fighting with settings. I've finally got Thunderbird to talk to Turnpike's imap server, even if it is only looking in the inbox and not the other folders at the moment.


Turnpike:
make sure the user has a non-blank password, or the account won't be able to login to the imap server from elsewhere (security feature in Turnpike).
Configure
Options
Login tab
tick "login using password", and under "permissions", scroll to the bottom and tick "access mail using pop3/imap server" to enable imap access for this user account -- which is the bit I overlooked first time round, resulting in much head-desking.
You can check the exact user name on the "user" tab - you'll need it for setting up the Thunderbird account



Turnpike Connect:
Configure
Email transfer...
Tickbox down the bottom of the screen under Mail Servers "enable imap"

Need to have Connect running in deliver mode (i.e. make a connection to the internet) or the imap server will refuse connections.


Thunderbird:
Set up an account on the XP box using the settings Wm helpfully posted here:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/demon.ip.support.turnpike/So7sW_G5rC0/EXc46oJLDXUJ
i.e.

In TB the Server Settings for the account to access TP via IMAP (a
*separate* a/c to any real e-mail address, I used Wm@localhost) should
be something like

===
server name: localhost
port: 143
username: [whatever username you use to log in to TP]
connection security: none
authentication method: passwd, trans insec

And set appropriate synchronisation options -- in my case I want a copy at each end.

Once I've got all the email copied into Thunderbird, the TB copy of the mailspool gets copied over to the Win8 box as part of the general "copy all files".


Useful links:

Wm's collection of useful Thunderbird add-ons
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/collections/Wm/turnpike/
Wm's post in dist with settings:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/demon.ip.support.turnpike/So7sW_G5rC0/EXc46oJLDXUJ
dist on folders:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/demon.ip.support.turnpike/SrmtShEE0E8/F4OqVAjSivcJ
dist on permissions when installing on Win8
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/demon.ip.support.turnpike/WgMSrD59iQM
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/demon.ip.support.turnpike/SrmtShEE0E8/F4OqVAjSivcJ

I haven't put *everything* back on the Thinkpad, but I've put back everything I need to actually be able to work. Moderately urgent things left to do -- the secondary security programs, Dragon Naturally Speaking (which will involve copying the data files over), the camera software, and getting it to talk to the wireless print server that also acts as a wifi relay point for the desk workstation. The latter is going to have to wait until Other Half returns home, because he has the software disk and current settings. Bad Jules, no biscuit, for forgetting to round up that one before starting, or at least before Other Half went on a business trip.

A good chunk of the time on this was taken up with backing up, and then backing up again, and then backing up a bit more, and then one last copy of vital files to a thumb drive (which I promptly lost, necessitating some urgent Googling later for how to take ownership of backup files when the machine name has changed). Another good chunk was taken up on waiting for the new isntallation to fetch five years' worth of Windows Update. The rest of it was just that fiddling about with medication dosage that affects attention span is not the ideal time to be running a full install of Everything.

The last time I did this I didn't have a Day Jobbe, and it only took me a couple of days. This time it's been mostly done in the evening after work, which really doesn't help even without the meds issue. I've created a checklist as I've gone along, because the last time I did this was some years ago, and I didn't remember to do or how to do some things, which necessitated some Googling.

The thing that actually prompted this outbreak of masochism in the first place was deciding to try Google Chrome, and having the machine fall over crying and complaining within a few minutes when I tried to run it. That was the final straw after some months of the previously stable install getting ever flakier. But just in case it was Chrome in and of itself, that's not going on until I've run another "clone disk" backup.

Autopope reminded me that there is a Lotus fork of Open Office. I hate Word, and I hate the Open Office word processor for exactly the same reasons, but sometimes I have to handle Word files, and Lotus Symphony is probably the least bad option, so I shall install that as my not-SmartSuite word processor. Maybe I will hate the Word mental model less now that I have had a couple of years of compulsory Word use at the Day Jobbe to get used to its horrible ways.