I met Oji the other day. He works on Outlook Express. He was surprised that I used Thunderbird to read my personal mail.

As aside: I’m an earn-your-business kind of guy. I want people to use what I make because they choose it and it delights them. I don’t care if people use it as the default; eventually they’ll choose something or they’ll revert back to it when something changes the default and its worse. But I hate it when people use what I make, especially in its early stages, because they feel obligated for some reason. I think people should use the best product for their needs, period. Even if their company makes a competing, if in your opinion inferior, product. Case in point, people in the industry like to point out how many people at Microsoft use Google over MSN Search. Well, for now, until I and the rest of the team make a product that our fellow employees want to use because it’s better, they should. I’m all for dogfooding (e.g. using our own products to provide feedback), but we get thousands of e-mails a day giving us feedback. We don’t need another 40,000 people sending us more feedback… really, we know we’re not doing as well as we can on long queries and searching MSDN. They’re on the list. Really.

Back to Thunderbird and Outlook Express… I’ve been using Mozilla / Thunderbird for some years now, having finally given up GNUS on Emacs as I wanted something that handled the GUI aspects of mail writing a bit better — spell checking, easily attaching files, easily browsing attachments, etc. Now, I have a rather straightforward mail setup. My mail is stored on a server that uses IMAPS, which is just IMAP that requires SSL connections to keep the mail / password secure. The only non-standard (but non-rare) is that I don’t have a signed certificate for SSL — but this should just trigger a “Are you sure?” warning the first time.

I tried Outlook Express, or OE, a few times here and there. It’s really just never worked for me. In particular, earlier versions just didn’t handle IMAPS at all well… POP was fine, but it wasn’t like the IMAP protocol was all that old, nor was SSL. They just weren’t popular enough for the features to really be nailed in those versions of OE. Fine. The Mozilla suite and then Thunderbird provided a fine alternative.

After talking with Oji, he was emphatic that my gripes had been solved. I was skeptical, but hey, he’s very knowledgable about the product, so I should give him the benefit of the doubt. I won’t change unless it’s strictly better — just the same means I have to learn a slightly different interface and control keys. Change sucks unless you get something for it.

So I tried it. IMAP setup still sucks. Thunderbird’s isn’t great either, as with both you have to go into the settings after you do the initial wizard to set it to SSL. However, OE doesn’t appear to be able to differentiate between UNIX-style folders and mail folders (e.g. folders can contain other folders or mail, but not both. This is because folders are real folders and mail folders are files. Some other styles allow folders to contain both mail and other folders). And when I tried to import all my folders, they didn’t appear. Seems I have to go to each individual folder to have it show up. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but really, I don’t want to have to think about my mail application. It should just work.

Here are some screenshots of the two side-by-side… as you can see, they’re very similar:

Outlook Express	Thunderbird

Some comments:

• There’s too much white space and extraneous stuff in OE. OE has a lot of random columns for things I don’t know and probably won’t use. There’s also a window for Contacts. Why do I need this here? After the “new mail” dialog is where I’d want to get a contact, but auto-complete is really the killer feature here.
• The initial mail window in OE is itty-bitty… I suspect it retains the resizing you immediately do, but come on…
• One of the most useful features in Thunderbird is integrated RSS feeds. It isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty close to what I want — treat blog posts as mail (or, more similar to USENET news). It’s a bit of a drag when there’s lots of posts, e.g. you don’t read Scoble for a while, but for most blogs that post every now and then, it’s great. It’s also integrated into the right tool… when I’m reading mail, I want to read updates from people — public mail, if you will. Having to click through zillions of sites in a browser is a pain, and having to use yet another client is also a pain.
• The OE guys still haven’t fixed the issue about non-trusted certificates. When Thunderbird encounters a cert that doesn’t have a trusted root, it asked if you want to allow it this time, permanently, or never. The permanent option is just that — you never see this again. With OE, you always have to accept it… just a start-up drag. I also noticed that I had to go to my nested folders again — they weren’t shown in the folder list by defailt for some reason. Lame.

OK… so, I haven’t found anything that makes me drool over OE, and I’ve got enough issues here that I don’t see any reason to move to OE anyway. I’m not asking for a ton here… just a good mail client that handles IMAPS running on a personal server with a non-trusted root cert. Nothing more, nothing less. Sure, Thunderbird has some issues, but IMHO OE still has more for what I need. Thus, until Oji fixes that, I’ll still be a Thunderbird user. Sorry Oji!

PS - Oji did promise to hand-deliver me a CD of the new version of OE as soon as it’s ready, and says that they’ll fix all my big issues. We’ll see.

This just in:

Just got off the phone with Bryan Lowney (its 2:45 am). They are packed up and waiting at the Helo pad to be taken to the original earthquake epicenter to add their labor to team there. They have completed 130 shelters in their area and have run out of materials. High winds are keeping the Helo’s from flying so material is short but there are enough shelters. They were awakened by the 6.5 quake but not personally impacted by it, except that all roads, trails, etc are simply gone, only way in or out now is by air. I prayed with him to bring the winds down - pray with!

The guys who were sick are getting better, appears to take about 3 days. Everyone is well and morale is high. Connections with the Pakistani military guys have been significant! Email addresses are being shared and there have been tears as guys come over to say goodbye to their American helpers. Praise God for the impact they have been able to have physically, relationally and spiritually! Almost forgot, they were able to get a nurse in late yesterday (she’s from Minnesota); she is the only care giver available at the moment for 4000 women. She has an interpreter with her who is pretending to be her uncle - that is the only way a woman can move around in this culture. Bryan told me that the men have literally thrown rocks at their women to chase them back inside when the team is building a shelter nearby - very difficult to watch and deal with - keep on praying!

My brother Scott is currently in Pakistan, with a group of 6 others from his church helping build shelters for one of the remote villages. I just got a quick update that I thought I’d share, as it really illustrates what is still needed in the area. Bryan is the lead there, I believe, and John is the local pastor.

Bryan has some prayer requests. The most important is the physical safety of the team. They are working in incredibly steep areas where the possibility of dangerous falls is always present. Trails and roads are falling away in after-shocks. Currently they are cut off from any ground transport, even by hiking. This is part of the reason they will do all their work in this one village. A prayer concern is that a helo comes in that can take them out on the 18th. It is their only way out. Apparently communications are iffy at best. Right now there is a lot of helo traffic but that is going to decrease because the team and construction gear has already been dropped. They are also concerned about resupply. They have three days of fuel for their stoves and three days of food, primarily power bars! They are assuming, hoping, they will be resupplied by helo’s coming in. (In fact one landed while we were talking) The helo’s in their area are Swiss and German, by the way.

They are linked up now with 7 members of a Swiss team making a total team of 14. They are building their own shelter right now and then will continue on building others. They are relieving another Swiss team who had a medical emergency.

The positives: They continue to be greeted with overwhelming grace, thankfulness and courtesy by the people there. They were introduced this morning to the villages’s second oldest citizen, 120 yrs old. They will meet the oldest sometime this week, 135 yrs old!!! The village has a population of about 7000 right now, 60% men, 40% women. Somewhere between 1400 and 1500 were killed
during the quake.

They desperately need at least two female doctors - please pray for that. Many women are injured and not being treated due to the rules about male/female contact.

Bryan reports that there are medics there from Cuba who are doing a great job with the men. Many Korean teams are in various areas doing great work. They have a great working relationship with the Pakistani military who are present in the village. They are working directly with a 22 yr old Lt. who is a great guy. Bryan said that all the military officers he has met are first class and would be leaders in any military. The military presence is necessary because of an unexpected problem. The outgoing Swiss team reported that the first shelters they built were taken apart and the pieces then sold by various persons in the village! The military is now choosing who will receive shelters and is watching over them. The officer is disgusted with the behavior of some of the village people who seem clueless about what is going to happen to those who don’t have shelter.

Praises: Team morale is high. No one is sick. They have been keeping their rules about drinking only bottled water and eating very carefully, mostly their own stuff. The Swiss teams have had major sickness due to not being so careful! As Bryan and I talked the weather was beautiful but about to change. They are expecting rain over the next three days. (not snow yet even though the altitude is 6000 feet where Bryan was talking to me.) I told him of my prayers about blocking with the snow - he reports that appears to be working! Keep on praying and commanding the weather.

Confidence level is high that they will be able to get enough shelters built to protect this entire village. One other good news thing - one of the guys brought a whole bunch of balloons with him (I think it was Scott) and that has proven to be important. They have been handing out balloons to kids and playing with them and the whole village has turned out to both watch and play themselves. I gather that play has been hard to come by with so many dead.

That’s about it. Bryan’s main concerns are that the guys keep safe as they fatigue over the next 10 days or so, that they receive resupply on food and fuel, and that they get timely helo transport out so they can make their return plane trip!

I think that is about it for the summary. They feel our prayers and we need to continue to pray in earnest. God keep them and help us all to hold them up.

John

It was indeed Scott who brought the balloons; I was down visiting him last week while he was priming them. i wasn’t sure if the kids there would appreciate it, but looks like they are, which is just great. He also brought 3 0-degree sleeping bags from Wal-Mart for $40. His plan was to give two to whomever needed them back there, and when they were done in two weeks to leave the other.

This has been a pretty bad year as far as natural disasters go. We started off with the tsunami that killed well over 200,000 people. We then had Hurricane Katrina, which while it only killed about 1,000 it pretty much destroyed New Orleans. And then we have the earthquake. The current tally is about 80,000n dead. What’s worse is that unlike the tsunami and hurricane, the survivors have winter coming which is likely to kill many more.

I’m pretty proud of my brother for doing this. It’s something to spend your two weeks of vacation building emergency shelters in December, especially in an area that’s been in the news due to the conflict over Kashmir between India and Pakistan. But it needs to get done, and I’m really thankful that Scott is able to help how he can — from building shelters to balloon animals.