When moving from an old computer to a new computer, alot of profiles get left behind. Some we can afford to lose the baggage and start afresh.

But some, like IM and email, we like to transfer the data from an old computer to a new computer. You may need to read and reply to mails already downloaded on the old computer.

Instead of copying the mail folder everytime, what you could do is to put the mail data on a portable diskdrive. This way you could carry it around and read it at home and in office.

I do not use Thunderbird in this way anymore (using GMail) but this should still work (For the 1.0.x version at least)

It is really quite simple. On WinXP,

1. Quit Thunderbird if it is running
2. Look for Application Data/Thunderbird under C:Documents and Settingsusername
3. Copy the folder and put it into the portable diskdrive
4. In the (copied) folder, open the file profile.ini
5. Change these 2 lines

   IsRelative=1
   Path=/Profiles/somenames

   to

   IsRelative=0
   Path=drive:/full/path/to/profile/

6. Start Thunderbird and all the former mailboxes will appear. Done!

Related Post:

• From Pegasus Mail to Thunderbird to GMail
• Exporting Pegasus Mail to Thunderbird

The frustrating thing about changing computer is that many of the data get left on the old computer. I am online most of the time and use Gaim alot to stay in touch with clients, partners and friends. On a new computer, suddenly all the contacts are “lost“.

It actually turned out to be very straight forward to move Gaim profile to a new computer.

On the new computer I just had to

1. Install a copy of GAIM
2. Copy the former .gaim folder which located on the old drive
Documents and Settingsusername Application Data.gaim
to
c:Documents and Settingsusername Application Data
3. Start Gaim. All the accounts and contacts will just appear. Perfect!

Related Post:

• Integrated instant messaging with Gaim
• Official support of QQ in Gaim

Google Apps for Your Domain is what is known as hosted applications. Hosted application is a new trend that is gaining attention and acceptance in the software arena.

Besides free and opensource softwares that you can download run on your own computers, free hosted applications is also another source of softwares that small business can turn to.

Free web email is probably the most common hosted application – GMail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, 163, Sina.

I personally find GMail has an edge over the rest for the business user as it can send email as another address.

Using this feature you can send email as if it comes from your company’s domain.

Not only that, if you have a few emails from different domains, you can manage all of them in a single GMail account.

Google Apps for Your Domain goes one step further to make the service customizable with your branding and color scheme.

This service is in beta and could become a paid service but “Organizations accepted by Google during the Google Apps for Your Domain beta period are eligible for free service for their approved beta users even beyond the end of the beta period, as described in the Terms of Service.”

But before you run to sign up, check out the privacy notice. Om Malik of GigaOM is apparently concerned about the privacy disclosure.

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If you, like me, have an account in each of these instant messaging (IM) services then you probably have all these client programs installed.

These client not only take up valuable space in the notification area (especially on a notebook), they are also notorious memory hog. Each comes with heaps of “features” that I never use and are piling on more with each new version. Worst, some like QQ forcefully install programs you don’t need and changes your system settings.

Wouldn’t it be great if a single program can replace all of them?

Enter Gaim.

My Gaim screenshot showing multiple IM (ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, QQ, GoogleTalk), multi-accounts and multi-language (Simplified Chinese) supported.

I use it for work and for personal contacts.

Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client .

This mambo-jumbo jargon simply means that it can support multiple instant messaging services like ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, GoogleTalk, all in a single program.

In fact it supports more – AIM, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu (never heard or use it before).

With plugin it can also support other IM protocol, for example QQ, a very popular IM service in China. (Currently my QQ support is broken but I’m waiting for the official support .)

Gaim was not my first integrated IM. Like many open source applications it takes time to mature. When I first discovered Gaim, it was not very usable.

For a long time I use Trillian, a commercial integrated IM that started as a free download. However as it grew successful commercially, the free version was neglected to the extend that connection to services like yahoo and ICQ are frequently down. (Note: This is based on past experience, I do not know about now since I had switched to Gaim)

Before that I also exprimented with Jabber during its infancy. At that time, Jabber was pretty promising. GoogleTalk is based on Jabber .

I cannot recall why it was dropped in favour of Trillian. Most likely that Yahoo support which was necessary for work.

Instant messaging is becoming an important channel for business contact. The ability to handle multi-protocols and accounts allows small business to stay in touch with customers easily.

What I like about Gaim?

• Supports all my IM account in one program
• Multiple account from the same service
  This is especially cool, perfect when you want to separate work from personal contacts. I can have 2 Yahoo accounts running at the same time, one personal, one for work.
• Chinese support
• Able to group together same user from different IM service

Room for improvement

• Better file transfer
• Better interface
  To be fair, the GTK interface had improved tremendously but still rear its ugly head here and there. Especially bad when selecting file and folders
• Smaller icons
  I can’t stand large icons. Most likely can be solvewith themes.

Chinese support

Excellent support for Chinese in both IM list and in chat. Language for user interface and menu can be selected during installation.

Where to get it?

• Gaim is at http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
  Windows version at http://gaim.sourceforge.net/win32/
• Current version: 1.5.0
• Function: multi-protocol Instant Messaging client

Related Post:

• Moving GAIM profile between computers
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For years I resisted Outlook, choosing to stand by Pegasus Mail. Pegasus is showing sign of age. The development is slow and for a long time it was not able to handle Chinese.

I moved to Thunderbird when 0.8 came out. It was able to handle Chinese in UTF8 which was what I needed badly.

It wasn’t easy for me as well. Pegasus had been my email companion for almost 9 years before the switch. There are so many automated filters, identities, and preference that just works. If it’s not broken why fix it?

Thunderbird is useful if you download email to you local PC or notebook and read the email offline.

Thunderbird did not last long. Mail started to appear in my GMail folder in October 2005. After trying out briefly, all my incoming email are now handled by GMail.

GMail is great if you are constantly online. It takes care of spams at the server end which mean you do not need to download all the spam before you can filter it.

The resistance to switching email program is very high. First, there is a whole lot of email archive to transfer over. Then there is the learning curve, to re-acustomise to the many small daily activities that had built around an interface that had grown so familiar.

To ease the transition, if you have many accounts, one way (which I did) is to move a low volume account to the new email program. Try out the features and test out the functions. When comfortable, transfer the rest to make a complete switch.

If you are using Pegasus and want to switch to Thunderbird, read my migration guide.

If you want to move on to GMail, I suggest leaving the old email behind and start afresh. There no easy way to migrate mail into GMail. Despite the huge 2.5G mail space, it will still quickly fill up in future.

Thunderbird is at http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/

GMail is at http://mail.google.com/

Related Post:

• Reading Thunderbird mail between computers
• Exporting Pegasus Mail to Thunderbird

Since moving from Pegasus Mail to Thunderbird, the old mail had been tucked away. Today I needed a very old email in the old Pegasus archive to recover an old account password. A good excuse to take the time and export all the old mail to Thunderbird.

There are 2 ways to do it

1. copy mail folders
2. use IMAP

The first way is fine if there is not may folders to export. Unfortunately that was not my case. It took a great deal of frustration before I decided to go with the second way.

Here’s how.

Copying the Mail folders

Thunderbird mail file is actually the unix mailbox format. Pegasus is also able to store in this format although it is not the default, so some work is required. Steps as follows,

1. Start Pegasus Mail.
2. Create folder in Pegasus in Unix Mailbox Format.
• In the Folders windows click Add…
• Message folder select Unix Mailbox Format
3. Copy your email from the original folder to this folder.
4. Go to the Pegasus Mail folder on the system.
5. Locate a file name like UNXnnnnn.MBX (eg. UNX06097.MBX)
   Sorting files by modify date would help here.
6. Copy this file to Thunderbird folder on the system
   probably
   C:Documents and SettingsuserApplication DataThunderbirdProfilesdefaultxxxxxxxx.sltMailmail_account
7. Start Thunderbird.
8. A new folder with name UNXnnnnn.MBX should appear in your mail account with all the mails.
9. Repeat for all other folders.

By the time I reached the 7th folders, I realise this is not the way to go. There are still 100s of folders and I can spend the whole night.

Using IMAP

IMAP to the rescue.

In order to do this you first got to have an IMAP account. My hosting at Fusion Flux happened to support it. Cool!

Here’s how.

1. Set up Pegasus Mail to connect to the IMAP account.
   Tools -> IMAP profile… -> New…
2. Fill up the required settings and connect to the IMAP server
3. At this point, if the connection is successful, an IMAP mailbox will appear
4. Create folders in the IMAP mailbox
5. Copy messages to the IMAP folders
6. Start Thunderbird and connect to the IMAP account.
7. Copy folders from IMAP account to local filesystem.

One warning, if you are copying large folder and/or using IMAP over SSL, the process can be pretty slow. But at least the copying can work in the background.

Hope this help you to migrate from Pegasus Mail to Thunderbird.

Related Post:

• Reading Thunderbird mail between computers
• From Pegasus Mail to Thunderbird to GMail

Tim Ringenbach is mentoring Mark Huetsch on this project to bring QQ support to Gaim. QQ is an extremely popular IM network in China, but doesn’t have much of a foothold in the rest of the world.

This is a big plus for Gaim and QQ users.

“Extremely popular” is not even close to describe the usage of QQ in China. To many Chinese, QQ is the Internet. Many user do not know how to use the web browser but is totally at ease with QQ.

Suffice to say if you are in China and without QQ, you are out of the conversation.

There is already a hack using OpenQ to suport QQ in Gaim for a while. However it is often broken when QQ release a new version. QQ as a proprietary platform make every effort to be as incompatible as possible.

Looking forward to this.

Related Post:

• Moving GAIM profile between computers
• Integrated instant messaging with Gaim