Foreign Perspectives

Moving to Linux would be very easy were it not for the hassles of getting your emails transferred over. However, at least it’s not the showstopper that it was just a few years ago.

Your first issue is finding your .PST files which you can do by clicking on properties. To copy those over, go out of Outlook and copy them onto a USB stick. Likewise for contacts, calendars, etc. if you want those too though I’ve never used them so won’t be talking about them here. Evolution has a PST import limit of around 500MB so if your PST file(s) are bigger than that you’ll need to create some more and move your email into them until you’ve the PST files below the limit. At this point, it’s best to disable Outlook which you can so simply by changing the POP server that it uses to pick up your email; note down the settings as you’ll need those to set up Evolution.

Next you will need to install Evolution if you’ve not done so already and also ReadPST.

Evolution can take quite a while to import PST files (hours in my case) so you’ll need some patience for this step. Once that’s done you’ll discover one limitation of its import facility: it doesn’t import email in top level folders. Thus you’ll find that various folders which it has created are empty. This is where ReadPST comes in because it will read those PST files and separate them out into the various folders with mbox files in each of them. For the folders which Evolution has left empty, you need to import the contents from the appropriate spot in the folder hierarchy which ReadPST has created for you.

Finally, there’s the business of getting new mail  into Evolution. Go into Edit, Preferences and create the email accounts that you had in Outlook. As always, the settings here aren’t quite the same as those in Outlook (why that’s so is a mystery as the mail servers obviously work with all mail clients). In my case, I found that 1and1 needed a bit of tweaking to get outgoing mail to work, the settings being server: auth.1and1.co.uk (as per Outlook), server requires authentication, no encryption, authentication type: login. Once you’ve those set up, it’s best to send yourself a message to check that it’s all working.

What about email rules? I took the chance to do a little rationalisation of my email folder structure so didn’t bother trying to import those but that seems the best approach anyway as Evolution doesn’t seem to have nearly so much complexity as Outlook did. I say complexity rather than flexibility as there are just so many options in there that if you’re not careful email can seem to go into random folders sometimes.

And that’s it. Sadly, importing the messages isn’t as automated as it could be and, in my case, took quite a while but then that’s down to me having email back to 1996 and a far too complicated folder structure.

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Even if you’ve only a tiny website the answer is definitely YES. After all, even if money is no object and your site is the smallest in the world you still want somewhere that’s reliable and when something goes wrong you still want to know that the customer service actually does look after the customers.

So, it matters, but how do you go about choosing that perfect hosting service for you? If you really do have a tiny website and only ever expect to have a tiny one then things like bandwidth, storage space and general facilities available probably don’t matter. However, many people start out small and with simple requirements and grow into a quite substantial and sophisticated web presence. I’m one of those who started out with basically a one page website many years ago and these days have a worryingly large number of sites with thousands of pages so it can happen.

Thankfully, there are numerous sites offering  webhosting advice. Typically you’ll get multiple top 10 listings (eg top for multiple domains, top for blogs, etc.). Don’t just go by the star ratings though as in a number of cases the user comments on the services reveal a completely different story. That’s not, as some suggest, that the reviews have been paid for but rather that top services can grow very fast and outstrip the capacity of customer service and changes in ownership are generally bad news for service levels. Quite surprisingly the current overall top 10 is nothing like the overall top ten from a year ago and almost all of the names listed are different ie it ain’t easy to choose a long term top provider.

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Despite using the Internet way too much than I’d care to admit over the years, it’s still able to spring some surprises on me.

For instance, I’d never have thought about buying something like a birthday cake online yet it’s possible to do just that and, in true Internet style, the choice of designs is much wider than you’d find in any normal shop and with all kinds of customisation to boot. But for some really offbeat things probably one of the best places to look is amongst the many free web directories. These are the places where you’ll find sites with tiny or non-existent marketing budgets listed and ’tis often a fascinating area to browse through.

What’s fascinating about all this is that there are still little niches which you’d not expect to find online yet someone, somewhere has filled them.

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