| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Bugs |
Which free software for working from home?I've been given permission, subject to providing myself with suitable conditions, to work from home one day a week.I'll need... broadband with suitable security stuff - tick computer - have basic one, looking at a new, cheap Dell - almost tick MS office compatible office suite (so I can transfer files - have been recommended Open Office email software - someone has suggested Thunderbird Does anyone have experience of Thunderbird and Open Office? Open Office is the recommendation of our office techie so I'm pretty happy with that, but Thunderbird has just been suggested to me by our finance director, who is going to install Firefox on my work PC for me. If my working from home is successful I might turn my experiences in to a beginners guide as home-working is "very DS"  .
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| mrsnesbitt |
"very DS" ??? 
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| Bugs |
Very Downsizer! 
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| mrsnesbitt |
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
get it! 
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| Treacodactyl |
We have open office on the Linux PC. 
We also have a copy of Firefox on the latest PC Plus CD, something to install while the Christmas Dinner is on.
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| tahir |
I tried OpenOffice and fpund it a bit fiddly, don't know anything about Thunderbird though. | ||
| Bugs |
Ahh. Hey Treacodactyl, we must get together sometime over a glass of wine or three and chat about this. Your place or mine? 
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| Bugs |
Have you used any other Office alternatives? You use Outlook for email though, am I right? |
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| tahir |
I use Outlook and MS Office cos that's what we use at work. Never tried anything else for my mail although there are allegedly many better free options. I'm always open to suggestions though. | ||
| bagpuss |
I use the mail client which comes with the complete mozilla install at work and if that is anything to go by thunderbird should be fine
I also really like firefox which we use as home (I use straight mozilla at work) and really like tabbed browsing which makes like much easier |
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| tahir |
So is thunderbird a mail client then? | ||
| tahir |
Forget that, yes it is. I might try it | ||
| jema |
OpenOffice I find preferable to MS office
FireFox is great. Thunderbird - no idea. jema |
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| tahir |
I've just installed thunderbird so I'll let you know. | ||
| Bugs |
Great...I'll be able to interview you for my article 
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| tahir |
It looks good so far, imported all my outlook folders without a hitch amnd have sent and received mail now
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| tahir |
The address book seems better than Outllooks | ||
| tahir |
There's also a handy little search box, and you can insert smilies into your mail too. I think I like it | ||
| sean |
I've never seen a real time software review before, keep us posted.
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| tahir |
Best hope it doesn't start going wrong then or it could turn into the first 18 rated one
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| tahir |
I love it, you can set it to put all your sent items from different addresses in different folders, something you just can't do in Outlook.
DOWNLOAD IT NOW 
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| Treacodactyl |
Does it also come with those features that let viruses take over your PC?
I've used Turnpike for years and it's been fine for me, a tad old though. |
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| jema |
Just to double check it is Outlook you have dumped and not Outlook express?
jema |
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| tahir |
Express, I use Outlook proper for my work stuff, and now Thunderbird for my personal mail | ||
| jema |
Important point this, I use Outlook at home and it is a lot better than express. jema |
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| tahir |
But Thunderbird's free (just made a donation though) | ||
| beth |
I've found evolution to be pretty good, both at work and home. It's linux only.
Beth |
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| jema |
I was not think in terms of what to get if starting afresh, but simply in terms of the incentive to change. jema |
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| tahir |
Yes, Outlook is indeed a much more fully featured programme than Outlook express and Thunderbird. How come you don't use a Linux client for your mail? | ||
| Bugs |
We have Outlook at work but it is rubbish for filtering (as far as I can make it work), and I wouldn't want to have it at home because I'd (a) have to pay a fair bit  and (b) don't have the same virus and spam protection at home as at work so anything that's a bit less common is surely better. I don't like Turnpike but admit I've not used it much.
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| jema |
My "job" is technically based on windoze software development. Even the shareware I have written is based on windoze. So it has been natural to stick with windoze as my main platform. But not having touched coding very much for several months, I am getting really itchy feet to make the switch to Linux. Maybe building another up to date Linux box and getting the site mirror operational on it, as well as making it the main platform. I use winvnc a lot, so I can view/operate the Linux box from windoze, making the switch would simply mean reversing this. I guess the one issue would be games, as I do play the odd PC game. jema |
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| tahir |
Have we got VNC in the free software sticky? That's an excellent little app. | ||
| jema |
We have one of them, it does seem to have become confusing winvnc tightvnc realvnc I use tightvnc for no reason I have ready to hand. jema |
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| tahir |
I use realVNC, I think that's why it's up there. | ||
| Treacodactyl |
Well a quick update. I've installed Firefox and Thunderbird on my new PC and they both seem ok.
Firefox seems slower to load pages compared to IE but I think it's loading other stuff that I may be able stop. Very easy to download and setup so far.
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| tahir |
If you download the calendar too you need to get it to start up at the same time as Thunderbird, I posted about that in another thread. V handy | ||
| Treacodactyl |
Is it easy to enable to separate email accounts on the same PC? | ||
| sean |
Dunno about that, but NeilK posted some tweaks to make firefox work faster. I've been using them on both our laptops (one XP one 9 without any probs, so give them a go. My eight key just produced a smiley.8
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| sean |
They're in the thread about firefox search plug-ins. | ||
| tahir |
Very easy, if you get stuck with anything go to www.mozillazine.org |
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| bagpuss |
on a completely random note I know one of the guys who writes that |
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| tahir |
You'd better tell him we're plugging his software then
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| monkey1973 |
I've used Openoffice for about two years now and whilst at first it took a bit of getting used to now it is second nature. My favourite feature is being able to convert documents and spreadsheets into PDF files which MS Office couldn't do (although it may do now, i don't know)
I've just started using the firefox browser and it seems pretty good. The extensions are good. I have only just started using Thunderbird again as my mail software as I have managed to get it to work with AVG Free edition (thanks to Jema for that). It seems to do everything OE does. The only other free software I have downloaded is Zonealarm firewall which (touch wood) hasn't let me down yet. I am considering installing Ad-aware and Spybot though as extra protection but I may just be being a bit to paranoid. Don't surf all that often from home. |