aysiu
June 27th, 2006, 08:57 PM
My wife and I had very similar computer journeys.
We both grew up in the 80s. We both came from DOS/Windows families. We both grew up using built-from-scratch computers (my dad built his own computers, and her parents bought from someone who built computers).
We also both had jobs out of college that forced us to use Mac OS 9, which was comparable to Windows ME in terms of usability.
Eventually, we moved away from Windows. She had to get a Powerbook for school, and I just wandered over to Ubuntu because I was bored with Windows.
Well, last night, she was complaining about how Apple's Mail program doesn't pay attention to what mailbox you're in when you compose a new message. I told her she should consider going back to Thunderbird because Thunderbird does pay attention to what folder you're in and put in the appropriate return address.
It's kind of weird. She has no problems using Firefox (and she actually really doesn't like Safari), but she's always had this struggle with Thunderbird. I think it's because Thunderbird, until recently, was unstable on the Mac. It would crash for no particular reason, and when quitting would hang for about ten seconds before actually quitting.
Converting her over to Thunderbird was like converting someone from Windows to Ubuntu, though! It was painful.
She had complaints all over the place. Is there any way to get all the trash cans combined? Why does it look so ugly? How do I decrease this font size?
When you're used to something, you want it that way, and you tend to be fairly critical of the imperfections of the new system and forgiving of the imperfections of the old system. I had to convince her that it's no more of a pain to use Cmd-Shift-M to compose a new message in Thunderbird as it was a pain to use Cmd-Shift-J to mark a message as junk mail in Mail.
I also started off with a little mind-reading gone bad. At first I thought she'd like the Tiger Mail Thunderbird theme, but she thought it was ugly (she didn't seem to find Mail's own interface ugly), but when she saw the Crossover theme I was using in Ubuntu, she said, "Oh! I want blue and white stripes in my mail, too." So I put her on Crossover in Thunderbird.
I think we're good now, though.
It took me about an hour to get her properly set up. I had to research a bunch of extensions and figure out how to do this userChrome.css thing (a lot of guides will tell you to edit this file, but few of them mention that you actually have to create the file first!).
Personally, I don't care if she uses closed source or open source applications. It just pains me to see someone complain about something for which there's a relatively easy solution--use something else.
But using something else isn't always so easy. You easily become accustomed to doing things a certain way, and it can be painful to learn to do things a different way.
She seems happy with her new Thunderbird setup, and I learned a few things in the process, too. I even found some extensions she wanted that I then decided I wanted too!
Things I now hate about Thunderbird
It defaults to autosaving messages every five minutes, which can be a pain in IMAP
It defaults to quoting above text
Its font settings apply to only the messages themselves and not the entire interface (this is where userChrome.css comes in)
It can't combine IMAP inboxes into one and then uncombine them at will (this is a nifty feature in Mail)
Okay... random blahblahblah post over.
We both grew up in the 80s. We both came from DOS/Windows families. We both grew up using built-from-scratch computers (my dad built his own computers, and her parents bought from someone who built computers).
We also both had jobs out of college that forced us to use Mac OS 9, which was comparable to Windows ME in terms of usability.
Eventually, we moved away from Windows. She had to get a Powerbook for school, and I just wandered over to Ubuntu because I was bored with Windows.
Well, last night, she was complaining about how Apple's Mail program doesn't pay attention to what mailbox you're in when you compose a new message. I told her she should consider going back to Thunderbird because Thunderbird does pay attention to what folder you're in and put in the appropriate return address.
It's kind of weird. She has no problems using Firefox (and she actually really doesn't like Safari), but she's always had this struggle with Thunderbird. I think it's because Thunderbird, until recently, was unstable on the Mac. It would crash for no particular reason, and when quitting would hang for about ten seconds before actually quitting.
Converting her over to Thunderbird was like converting someone from Windows to Ubuntu, though! It was painful.
She had complaints all over the place. Is there any way to get all the trash cans combined? Why does it look so ugly? How do I decrease this font size?
When you're used to something, you want it that way, and you tend to be fairly critical of the imperfections of the new system and forgiving of the imperfections of the old system. I had to convince her that it's no more of a pain to use Cmd-Shift-M to compose a new message in Thunderbird as it was a pain to use Cmd-Shift-J to mark a message as junk mail in Mail.
I also started off with a little mind-reading gone bad. At first I thought she'd like the Tiger Mail Thunderbird theme, but she thought it was ugly (she didn't seem to find Mail's own interface ugly), but when she saw the Crossover theme I was using in Ubuntu, she said, "Oh! I want blue and white stripes in my mail, too." So I put her on Crossover in Thunderbird.
I think we're good now, though.
It took me about an hour to get her properly set up. I had to research a bunch of extensions and figure out how to do this userChrome.css thing (a lot of guides will tell you to edit this file, but few of them mention that you actually have to create the file first!).
Personally, I don't care if she uses closed source or open source applications. It just pains me to see someone complain about something for which there's a relatively easy solution--use something else.
But using something else isn't always so easy. You easily become accustomed to doing things a certain way, and it can be painful to learn to do things a different way.
She seems happy with her new Thunderbird setup, and I learned a few things in the process, too. I even found some extensions she wanted that I then decided I wanted too!
Things I now hate about Thunderbird
It defaults to autosaving messages every five minutes, which can be a pain in IMAP
It defaults to quoting above text
Its font settings apply to only the messages themselves and not the entire interface (this is where userChrome.css comes in)
It can't combine IMAP inboxes into one and then uncombine them at will (this is a nifty feature in Mail)
Okay... random blahblahblah post over.