15 November 2010

How to live without Outlook

As part of my series on ‘How to Live without Microsoft’ and bored of Outlook’s crashes and hogging of my computer I look for alternatives.

I've been using the various Outlook incantations for over 15 years. I think its a great concept and at times has been a great product but I'm just fed up with it. It hogs memory and it stores all MY information in its own bespoke Microsoft format like some spoilt child.

I have tried to turn away from this beast in times past but always been forced to return by the fact that I wanted to have a smartphone which synced seamlessly with my desktop calendar and particularly tasks. At the time that meant a Windows smart phone, which of course meant it was tied in with their utter delight in a complete lack of shared or sharing formats (although I have to say MS have been a lot better at this of late).

This morning Outlook took over 10 minutes to load, crashed when I tried to start writing an email (how dare I!), and then spent the next 5 minutes providing Microsoft with information about just how bad it had been. Enough is enough.

I knew about Mozilla Thunderbird from using Linux distributions and past attempts at abandoning Outlook. I found it to be a good email client but lacking in some areas: notably calendar and tasks. Since that time however GMail has come along, Thunderbird has matured and there are more add-ins for it available. I found dmfield’s post (here) on setting up Thunderbird which happens to be quite old and on a Linux forum, but that’s what I’m talking about: to my mind programs should work in much the same whatever platform I as the user chose (or are forced by circumstance) to run them on.

His post got me started (although some things were a little different and I searched for the plugins independently rather than using his links in case they were out of date).

The Process

Email

  1. Get a Google Mail account (or Google for your domain)
  2. Install Thunderbird. If like me you use a separate disk for files, you might like to change where the profile information is stored.
  3. Run it, It will ask for your email address and password and then do the rest for you, although if like me you have a huge backlog of mails on the server you might want to restrict it to downloading only the last x days in Tools, Account Settings, [Account Name] Sync & Storage.

Calendar

  1. Install Thunderbird plugins (which I’ve linked to here but you can find from Thunderbird, Tools, Add-ons, search:
    1. Lightning (Thunderbird Calendar)
    2. Provider for Google Calendar (to sync the calendar)
  2. Setup calendar: Refer to this link. NB the find the URL by going to Google Calendar, Settings, Calendar Settings, Calendars, Click on name of calendar you’re interested in, Right click Private Address XML link at the bottom and select ‘Copy Link Location’.

Contacts

I found two options for syncing contacts with Thunderbird: Zindus and gContactSync. As of writing addresses aren’t sync’d between them and GMail by default. When enabled in Zindus they are done in a odd way,  see this page as to why so I went with gContactSync which for me seemed to handle them a little better.

  1. Get your Contacts out of Outlook:
    • If you have Google Apps for Education/Business then Install Google Apps Sync for MS Outlook and run it. NB: If you get “Google Apps Sync is not enabled for your email account. Please ask your domain administrator to enable it.” then you need to administer your domain.
    • If you don’t have Google Apps for Education/Business then do a one time export from Outlook and Import into GMail. NB: with this method any changes you make to your Contacts in Outlook will NOT be sync'd. This is not appropriate if you are going to continue using Outlook e.g. as an ‘bridge’ to sync to an old Nokia phone or something.
  2. Find and Merge Duplicates in GMail Contacts.
  3. Install Thunderbird plugin (gContactSync or Zindus) (to sync contacts).
  4. Setup Contact sync. Consider syncing with a specific address book (e.g. called gContacts) and not the Personal Address book until you're satisfied its working ok:
    • gContactSync: Select gContactSync from the top menu, enter your required settings. NB as of writing you need to enable Address sync as it is disabled by default: gContactSync, Preferences, Advanced,  Sync postal addresses.
    • Zindus: Under Tools, Zindus add your GMail settings. NB: As of writing Addresses are an optional Advanced option, disabled by default.

Tasks

Currently there is no working sync for Google tasks as its not available via the API but it is likely to be released soon: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/top-tasks-for-google-tasks.html

In Addition

I also installed a plugin to enable calling via Skype from the address book: TBDialOut (I found selecting callto: and adding prefix +44 in options worked).

More Security

If you want more security in Google Apps you can enforce https connections under Domain Settings, [edit] and you can now add ‘two-tier’ authentication where it sends an SMS to your mobile to clarify ownership. For programs that don’t support two-tier authentication then you’ll have to create an “Application Specific Password” which is possible under Settings/Account Settings/ Authorizing Applications/Generate new app-specific password. You then just enter this where you normally enter your password.

Conclusion

I don’t have a working contact sync across the board yet as I have some legacy Exchange data to deal with, and tasks is quite a disappointment but it is working well so far for mail and calendar.

Other posts in the series:

01 November 2010

How to live without Microsoft: Operating Systems

With the rise in popularity of Apple products I take a look at how reliant a lot of us have become on Microsoft and whether there really are any viable alternatives for business users.

Microsoft have produced a lot of great software (Windows 7, MS Office) but also some bad releases (Windows CE, Vista). Its also true that neither theirs nor the major alternative (Apple) are the cheapest of products. Whilst it’s often a common truth that ‘you get what you pay for’ I’m taking a look at whether in the modern age of interoperability and online collaboration there are really any viable alternatives.

The basis of any computer is the operating system. If you imagine the bridge between all the circuit boards and wires and the user as a layered open sandwich (mmm bacon) then the OS is like the bread on the bottom. It’s the first point at which the computer starts to be useful to an ‘end user’.

In the case of a PC, the OS of choice for many years has been Microsoft’s latest offering, whether that was XP, Vista or now Windows 7 but without making the expensive switch to Apple are there really any alternatives?

Rather than constantly buying new hardware, I would recommend that users try and squeeze more out of their existing hardware. I have to hand it to the guys at MS for Windows 7, I think it’s a great OS which really shines in it’s ability to run even on old hardware. However it is expensive so the best alternative in my opinion at the time of writing is Ubuntu. It’s a Linux distribution so its built on top of rock solid basis but that used to mean that hardware support was a bit haphazard and some things weren’t that intuitive. With Ubuntu Mark Shuttleworth and the guys have really created a working useful OS for the end user. An open source alternative is OpenSuse.

Ubuntu comes in Desktop and Server flavours so you could even use it as a server although you might want to consider something a little less bulky like a Debian distribution for that.

Other posts in the series: