31 July 2008, 14:09 in

Make Outlook keep emails on server

Here is a simple tip that may make your life easier if you use POP3 email accounts and use Microsoft Outlook to check your email, but occasionally also want to use webmail when away from your PC.

The problem is that by default, Outlook downloads your emails and removes them off the server. This means that if someone sends me an email and I check my email at home in Outlook, then the email no longer exists on the server. When I get to work the next day and login to my webmail, the email isn’t there, so I can’t read it or reply to it until I’m at home again.

It would be great if I could use Outlook at home for its powerful features yet still be able to view the emails from webmail for some time. Fortunately there is an easy solution…

In Outlook, under the settings for each of your email accounts, you can specify that Outlook should leave a copy of messages on the server for a number of days.

Making Outlook keep emails on server for a number of days

If you set this to say, 2 days, then you can still see any emails in your webmail for 2 days after you downloaded them in Outlook. This works well for me.

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30 July 2008, 22:36 in

Virus scanners

To me a virus scanner should be discrete and lightweight. It should not hog system resources or slow things down drastically, and it should not constantly pop up annoying messages to tell you to update or reboot your PC and so on. Of course it should also be effective at detecting and cleaning viruses!

For the last few years I have used Computer Associates VET anti-virus on my main PC at home. For the other Windows PCs I have at home I used the free edition of AVG. My VET subscription recently expired, and even though I’ve been happy with it, I spent some time evaluating some of the options.

BitDefender is quite cheap and many users are satisfied with it. However after a bit of searching the web I came across quite a few forum posts or articles where people had experienced problems on Windows Vista or when running games.

I use Kaspersky Anti-Virus at work. It appears to have good virus detection and it’s quite configurable, but it seems to slow the system down quite a bit.

AVG seems pretty good and I will continue to use the free edition on my spare PCs.

ESET NOD32 does not appear to be that well known; I hadn’t heard of it until recently. It has a reputation for being lightweight and unintrusive, and apparently has excellent virus detection. I liked it best out of the virus scanners I tried and ended up buying a license for my main PC which runs Windows Vista.

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8 April 2008, 19:07 in

Using Subversion to manage documents

There are various documents that I frequently want to access or modify from various computers, such as home or work or a friend’s house. Previously what I would do is either email files to myself, or copy them back and forth via USB flash drives. This is time consuming, insecure, and error prone (to get mixed up about which copy of a file is the most recent one). As a better solution, I decided to use a Subversion repository.

Subversion is a version control system, typically used by programmers to manage their source code, but it can be used to store all manner of things (in this case mainly Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and plain text files). The normal Subversion client is a command line utility, but various graphical user interfaces are available; I use TortoiseSVN which conveniently integrates into Windows Explorer.

Using Subversion to manage my documents has several benefits. I can now access my files over the internet from any computer (provided that it has a Subversion client such as TortoiseSVN installed which is quick, easy, and free). Subversion maintains a full history of changes to the repository, so it is possible to go back and find that bit of info you deleted the other day, or figure out at what point you changed a certain sentence in a file. The files are safely backed up on a remote server, so even if my computer dies I haven’t lost them. Finally, committing changes to the repository or getting the latest changes from the repository literally takes seconds to initiate; less clicks / keystrokes / fumbling is required compared to copying files to a USB drive or emailing them. Love it.

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7 April 2008, 12:37 in

John Carmack's dev diaries

John Carmack is one of the co-founders of iD Software and lead programmer of famous computer games including Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. It is old news by now, but his development diaries from 1997 to 2004 have been put up online. There is some interesting stuff in there, and it is worth a look if you are a programmer or a fan of his games. He also maintains a blog but it seems to be very infrequently updated.

John Romero, famous game designer and programmer and the other co-founder of iD Software, also has a blog.

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24 April 2007, 18:52 in

Budget home theatre PC specs

Iavor recently asked me to help him spec out a basic low budget home theatre PC. Here’s what I came up with from the Nintek website:

Total: $959.90

I think this system represents very good value. I’m not sure how this one would go with high-def TV recording and playback but it would certainly handle standard-def digital TV without problems. Personally I would spend a little more on the case but this one will do the job.

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19 December 2006, 22:51 in

Up and running with Amcom

Today I got my ADSL up and running with Amcom. I’m currently on one of their 8Mbps/1Mbps plans and my modem syncs at ~7Mbps, so I’m pretty happy. The speed difference compared to 1.5Mbps is noticeable. While each individual download isn’t always much faster (because it may be limited by the server you are pulling it from), you can download a lot more in total with multiple concurrent downloads.

I intend to upgrade to an ADSL2+ plan (24Mbps/1Mbps) once I get an ASDL2 modem. I currently have a Draytek V2600G which I’m really happy with but unfortunately it’s ADSL1 only. The modem I’ve got my eye on is the Draytek V2800G which is a 4 Port, 802.11G+ (11/54/108MB) wireless ADSL router with with ADSL2/2+ support, SPI firewall, VPN, and print server.

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14 December 2006, 13:34 in

Switching to Amcom

A while back I posted about iiNet (my current internet service provider) downgrading my plan from 1.5 Mbps to 512 Kbps due to increasing wholesale costs. iiNet did not have any free ports at my exchange so I didn’t have the option of upgrading to one of their Broadband2+ plans. Nick informed me that he was with Amcom. Up until then they offered 8Mbps plans but recently released 24Mbps ADSL2 plans. They sounded good and had ports available on my exchange, so I decided to switch.

The process has been taking much longer than it should. I submitted the application form via email on the 21st of November. First my application somehow got lost for a few days. Then there was an issue because I had previously created an Arachnet email account with the same username as the one on my application (Arachnet were bought out by Amcom), and the web interface wouldn’t let me delete it! Then Amcom couldn’t proceed because iiNet still had ADSL codes on the phone line (I had assumed that Amcom could handle that). Then it took over a week for iiNet to remove the ADSL codes.

Yesterday I received an email that application was proceeding and that I should be up and running next Tuesday. Until then I will be without internet at home.

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16 November 2006, 11:56 in

iiNet plan downgrades

I have been an iiNet customer for around four years. I moved to my current address in South Perth just as iiNet were releasing their 8 Mbps plans that were available if you bundled with their iiPhone phone service. I applied for the plan but, due to the South Perth exchange being full, I was stuck on Telstra hardware limited to 1.5 Mbps. I stayed on the plan hoping that one day the South Perth exchange would be upgraded and I would be able to get faster speeds.

I recently received a letter from iiNet announcing that, due to increasing wholesale costs, they are going to downgrade my speed to 512 Kbps (which is one third of my current 1.5 Mbps). Alternatively I can keep the current 1.5 Mbps speed if I pay an additional AU$20 per month. I understand the situation is beyond iiNet’s control but it is still really disappointing. In terms of value-for-money, this change makes their plans go from reasonable to bad.

There is a thread on the Whirlpool forums about this. A lot of people seem to be changing from iiNet to other ISPs.

Even though I would like to stay with iiNet to avoid the hassle of changing email addresses and so on, it is not a good choice in terms of value for money. I am either looking for 1.5 Mbps for substantially cheaper than what iiNet is offereing, or for a faster connection (8 Mbps or ADSL2+ at 24 Mbps) which I am prepared to pay more for. There is a new ADSL2+ plan available from Lets Go but it isn’t currently available at my exchange. Amcom offer their own 8Mbps plans which sound pretty good.

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