Move over from outlook to thunderbird

After using outlook for a very long time I finally thought about moving on to thunderbird. The process of setting this up turned out to be surprisingly easy..

After downloading thunderbird the installer automatically imported my existing outlook psts from my desktop(my biggest concern about the shift was loosing my old mails).

It did not migrate my email accounts though. However adding my gmail account to thunderbird was a breeze. Unlike setting this in outlook there was no need to set up the incoming/outgoing servers.. just my account id and password did the trick.

My next concern was i could not minimize thunderbird to tray icon like i was used to for outlook. A google search led me to this nice plugin which fixed this..

Importing my contacts from outlook address book was straight forward too.
Thunderbird asked me on start up whether I wanted to use it as default. Marking this as yes means i can right click any document and now the send to email recipient uses thunderbird instead of outlook.

One thing which nagged me was all that all my old mails showed as unread.. A simple "ctrl a" (select all) and right click followed by mark as read in each of my folders solved this issue.

As a final word i love what i got.. Its really light and does not bother my machines memory the way outlook used to.. Next am going to try using open office.

The definition of language

A few years back in the year 2002 I was completing hand written applications for my first job . There always was a field called languages known. My standard entry was English,Hindi,Marathi followed by a joke to whoever was around "can i enter C as one of the options?". Usually this resulted in a light hearted banter.

Fast forward to 2007. Am on a website filling up job applications. Theres a drop down titled languages known. What do i do? I start looking for Java(by pressing J repeatedly.. its a drop down you know) and then i see that the options started with Afrikaans.. "J" got me to Javanese..

I thought of that incident 5 years hence. It brought a smile to my face. The world has come a full circle or is it me who has?

Strange things technology makes you do or should i say strange things technology does to you?