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The Case of the Multiple Email Inboxes

February 16th, 2009

So a few weeks ago, I moved our online content to a new server, one with dual quad-core processors, 16GB RAM and a lot more bandwidth. One big change I made was to stop funneling messages through a third-party service and move everything in-house, so to speak, so we had full control.

Since all our email is uses the IMAP protocol, I simply had to move the messages from the old accounts to the new ones, after creating new accounts with the updated incoming and outgoing server information. It’s not an instantaneous process, but simple to do.

However, I have accumulated some 40,000 messages over the past decade. I’m not sure why I keep some of the older ones around, but nonetheless it took several hours for the task to complete.

Now some commercial email services can do this IMAP to IMAP transfer in the background, but I opted for the manual method rather than explore an automated alternative. I felt that just doing it was quicker than seeking out other solutions, but feel free to tell me your experiences in our Comments section.

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Newsletter #422 Preview: Are Chronic Leopard Bugs Getting a Fair Hearing?

December 30th, 2007

The other day I heard from a long-time friend, a former member of a forum I managed on AOL way back when. He has an engineering degree, and worked for many years as the chief sound engineer for a famous singer (now deceased), so he definitely knows his hardware.

He’s also a Mac loyalist, and has earned his stripes by working with Apple’s hardware and software from the earliest days. In all fairness, some of his experiences are stellar, which is why he continues to use Macs. But he’s had his share of problems too, and lately he’s been keeping tags on Leopard’s rough edges.

Rough edges?

Didn’t I say in an earlier column that my experiences with Leopard have been terrific? Indeed I have. And, despite the fact that Apple’s own discussion forums and those Mac troubleshooting sites are littered with hundreds of reports of anomalous behavior, system crashes, and performance issues covering a host of setups, little has been nailed down so far.

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The Mac Troubleshooting Technique Rarely Mentioned

December 18th, 2007

When I wrote a commentary about whether or not Leopard was successful, predictably the comments were all over the place. Some of you had experiences that match mine, with no problems or just issues so minor they weren’t worth serious attention. But others voiced endless frustration, going so far as to zero your Mac’s hard drive in other to attempt to make Leopard “take” without protest.

To be sure, I’m rightly concerned that the experiences appear to be all over the place. While I grant that the vast majority of Leopard users have had great experiences, there are far too many to ignore. But how do we get to the bottom of this dilemma?

Now it’s fair to say that many of the Leopard-related issues are related to conflicts with third-party software. This is something that will no doubt be resolved over time as more and more products are updated for 10.5 compatibility. Indeed, that’s common with new system releases, and it doesn’t mean Apple got Leopard out the door prematurely, although I think it’s clear they did.

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The Leopard Report: Another Look at 10.5 Bugs

December 11th, 2007

It’s got to be a strange world out there, with some folks reporting that Leopard has driven them crazy, while most of you appear to have had great experiences with Apple’s latest operating system.

Include me in the latter camp.

In recent articles, I’ve tried to put this confusing picture into perspective. I know there are Mac troubleshooting sites that are designed to keep tabs on such matters, and you can certainly find lots to chew over, such as unexpected crashes, and Wi-Fi connection problems and printing issues. Any one of these items ought to be sufficient to cause deep concern, particularly if your Mac was working just great prior to the Leopard upgrade.

Now, to be perfectly fair, the furore has died down quite a bit since the 10.5.1 update came out last month. Little has been said about the immediate requirement for a 10.5.2, and some of the latest reported bugs appear to be downright eccentric. One calls for Command- or right-clicking on a blank column in a Finder window, and selecting Get Info from the popup menu. This particular act will usually cause the Finder to crash and relaunch. Big deal! Since it doesn’t represent an action one might take in the real world to perform a real function, it’s not a bug that ought to rank high on Apple’s list of problems that need to be fixed.

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