Learning about email ??

My neighbour has been doing a computer course at college. She's been
moaning about how complicated email is. I've told her it's quite easy
compared to other stuff. I've offered to show her how easy OE is to use for
email (although I don't use OE myself).

Got chatting again tonight and she showed me her instruction manual she'd
got from the college. Couldn't believe my eyes - they are teaching her
email using Hotmail and IE !!!! Web email !!! Not using OE at all !!

Anyone know - is this normal ? She's gonna look a bit silly if she gets a

andon...

Sound extremely abnormal to me.
The only business use for Hotmail is for using the PC to send email
whilst at work without the boss finding it coming through the firms
mail server. Very dubious.

Rabbit...

My local library only allows ( and recommends) the use of Hotmail accounts
when the *computer buddies* help new users who want an email account. They
don't even encourage a buddy to broach the use of OE ( these are complete
newbies who wouldn't know an alternative existed) which I've pointed out is
IMHO rather short sighted in encouraging these newbies who in many cases are
on a PAYG dial up account 'cos they * don't know how to use a pooter so it's
not worth paying for a package/BB deal*. Another reason the library give is
that Hotmail accounts can be set up instantly which might once have been the
case but now can take 10 days to become active.

Bram...

Another thing in libraries would be privacy. Unless you set up umpteen
hundred accounts identities etc, you would all be able to read each
other's stuff

Rabbit...

Yebbut the people who want the help of computer buddies in general have
their own pooter (and often terrified of it), it's just that they want to
know what to do at home with their own machine.

Bram...

O I C.. !!

I didn't know what a computer buddy was. I thought you were my computer

Rabbit...

A good.computer buddy is somebody who remembers what it was like to be
terrified of the pooter, can talk in simple language and really wants the
newbie to have the enjoyment that they got from a pooter.

Rabbit...

Oh any time, I've always fancied having a toyboy :-)

Bram...

One you can wind up..?

Rabbit...

Prefer battery operated :-)

Bram...

Then you are in luck. I have Bats aplenty.
;-)

Rabbit...

But I don't want any Billing And Tracking Systems :-)

Bram...

It's OK Sandra. My bats have their own radar type tracking system and you
won't be billed for this information.

http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?Acronym=BATS&Find=find&string=exact

buddy Sandra :-)

job claiming she knows all about email cos she's done a course on it -
isn't she ?

Or is it me not understanding something ?

BoyPete...

I had the same problem when my Lewis was at junior school. To avoid paying
for Microsof lecenses, the taught kids IT using obscure freebie progs. What
use could that be to the kids?? MS progs are the standard in business, and
that is what they should be taught. He's now in senior school, and is using
MS stuff, so his earlier years in IT were a complete waste of time!!

Ali...

No it wasn't! At the very least he knows there are alternatives.

The only reason MS progs are standard in business (if they are) is because
so many people haven't experienced anything else.

Tickettyboo...

No, I don't think they were a waste, They will have taught him the basics
of getting round a pc. That is a lot of use, much more than any one
particular piece of software.
Cos I do short term contracts, I have run round hamster wheels in oodles
of companies ( keep on the move and they wont suss you is my motto )
Can't remember the last time I used Outlook, but have used a variety of
other email clients, some I had heard of but often they are obscure, in
house, ones. Spreadsheets (which I use a lot) are usually Excel, but in
the dim and distant past, I used Lotus a lot. Most of the software I use
is specific to each company, in house systems of various flavours. The
basic skills are transferable, quirks which are specific to the current
stuff are quickly absorbed., more easily so because I have used such a
wide variety.

Anita...

It is quite normal - we show them how to use hotmail because it is one
that is free to use. Many of our students do not have a pc of their own
so therefore use other pcs at libraries etc., to retrieve and send
emails.
That is the reason why hotmail is used.

If they already have their own pc and ISP - then we help them to
understand and learn how to use that email instead.

Bram...

Maybe it's a good thing to show them there is more than one way of doing
things. I don't have OE on this computer. Maybe the future isn't 110%

Tickettyboo...

But , if it weren't for Microsoft, the likes of me n you would not be
posting here discussing it :-)

Bram...

True. Competition is thin on the ground. I'm sitting here try to
cofigure the settings for Thunderbird on Mwpis Linux 2 Beta2 and I can
hardlt read what I writing in this reply. lol

Bram...

See what I mean..? look at the mess lol

Jeff Gaines...

I was planning to use himem/emms.sys to use 1 MB, wonder if they can be
tweaked for 1GB?

Ali...

Obviously you wouldn't be discussing MicroSoft, but you could well be
discussing Digital Research and CP/M86 and its successors and the GEM
windowed GUI. Neither email, news, nor the Web owe much to Microsoft.

Tickettyboo...

Cos their marketing, which is so disliked, brought pootas to numpties like
me. The other folk you spoke about seem to have been happy serving a
smaller, more specialised market

Ali...

When MS-DOS appeared, Bill was welcomed as the white knight saving the world
from DRI's evil empire^W monopoly. (The 'other folk' was just one company,
its owner, and its products)

Tickettyboo...

No, but they don't seem to have had the commercial nous or interest to
give me the choice.

Ali...

It's possible that by the time you were buying, they had lost the marketing
war and every PC came with Windows bundled.

Tickettyboo...

Like I say, the others don't seem to have had the marketing nous. I aint

Ali...

With the benefit of hindsight, I can't argue with that.

saying that MS is the only choice or even , for all I know, the best but
they seem to be the only ones who had the commercial expertise and drive

Ali...

Some folk would say dirty tricks.

to want to to get their products into the homes of people like me..at a
cost I could afford and with a product that was widely enough known for me
to inadvertently stumble on the fantastic help I have had.

Ali...

But Microsoft don't make computers. And you didn't make your buying decision
on the basis of the software.

When did you get your first poota?

Tickettyboo...

First one was I suppose a little bbc acorn electron, in the mid 80's.
Second ( or maybe thrid) hand. It was fun to fiddle and find out how to
write little programs for the children. Can't for the life of me remember
what happened to it, life with small children meant I didn't really have
much time to play with it and certainly didn't have the knowledge to take
it very far. Think I had one book that gave me pointers as to what to do.

Ali...

An interesting machine. It's big brother , the BBC B was way ahead of it's
time, but they took some strange decisions when deciding which bits to leave
out for the Electron.

Did you ever consider a Commodore Amiga, an Atari St or an Apple Macintosh?

Tickettyboo...

Not really, I had brief access to an apple mac in the late 80s but again,
would have needed a lot of time to suss it out. Was fun to play with it
for a while, but I didn't really have much of a clue.

Then in 2000, after playing with a laptop, I decided to get my very own
poota. I based my buying decision, not on the operating system ( wasn't

Ali...

And by that time, all the alternatives to Microsoft (except Apple) had run
out of money. Just like 8-track stereo, Betamax video recorders, British
Satellite Broadcasting and the squarial, quality lost to marketing.

entirely certain what that meant) , not on manufacturer, but on the fact
that it had big ears and a nice smile. Honest injun I did. LOL
oh and it was the best kind, it was grey :-)

Jeff Gaines...

My first PC was an Amstrad 512 which I expanded to 640, I *think* it
was an 8086 which was a bit up-market compared to an 8088.

I have CD's/ISO's for all the MS OS's from about DOS 6.22 (which was
about the best), I've got older ones on floppies I think :-)

Ali...

See, nothing to do with Microsoft at all. :^)

Tickettyboo...

LOL but it was, well, my decision wasn't directly influenced by the fact
that it turned out to have a MS operating system on it. But, the fact that
MS had the commercial expertise and drive to want their stuff in my
kitchen and zillions like it helped to fuel the boom in home pcs. To my
way of thinking it went hand in glove. From what you have said, left to
their own devices the other software (os anyway) people would have been
happy with the niche market for the techy minded folk. They may have the
bestest product in the world, but without the commercial know how it aint
gonna filter down to the likes of me.

Anyway, I have a plane to catch tomorrow, so this little Boo is off to
bed.
Nightbless

JoeH...

Was that the LGBOD then? LOL

Tickettyboo...

Yes, it was my Little Grey Box Of Delight :-)

Jeff Gaines...

I have a brand new 5.25" floppy packed away and 30 new DD disks,
trouble is the surface start to crumble on the disks because of their
age.

Jeff Gaines...

You can get higher resolutions with Escape Codes, if you can remember
them!

Jeff Gaines...

Many thanks :-)

I'm OK for the various OS's but not sure if I've still got any apps, I
do have the original source code for a DOS based bank account program I
wrote - and which my SIL still uses.

Now happily living with the Booettes and still got a nice smile and big
ears :-) Am on my second 'growed up' poota, know a little more than the
'less than zilch' I know 6 years ago, but am still delighted at the fun I
can have sat in my kitchen playing on a pc.

Tickettyboo...

well, its true!

Jeff Gaines...

Absolutely, Bill Gates dismissed the Internet as a passing fad!

All the Internet standards were laid down long before MS became
interested, and they ignored them completely - perhaps they didn't know
about them?

Flying Rat...

Microsoft did not even invent Internet Explorer, they bought that in
from a small company. Bill Gates got interested in the internet when he
used Netscape Navigator for himself and realised they were missing the
boat.

They also got much of Windows functionality from Xerox. The company has
had much success developing and marketing the ideas of others. Even MS-
DOS, their first major success, was licenced from someone else.

Ali...

Bill Gates wrote (much of) Microsoft Basic, which was actually their first
major success, pre-dating MS-DOS, beimg used on the first personal computer
- the Altair. I don't know of any other MS application that wasn't
originally bought in. I+ suppose there must be some.

Rabbit...

Hear, hear!!! I know it's fashionable to knock MS but for me it was the
salesman showing me that using OE/Windows was so simple that convinced me I
could use a pooter. Doesn't matter what I've learned since, it was MS who

=?iso-8859-1?Q?=A7ire=DFird?= & $ir Vivor...

I'd already been sent on a Word Processing course for a Philips 5002
machine by my firm back so I knew about that side of things. I'd even
bought myself an Amstrad PCW8256 (which wasn't compatible with other
Amstrads, let alone other makes) and taught myself how to use it. So
when I decided that I needed something a bit better, I went to a
friend who showed me how to use Word. I wasn't even interested in
using the net or OE. I didn't even know what they were.

When I wanted to get my own PC because using one of my friend's
machines meant that I was limited to when the children were at school,
I was asked if I wanted the internet. At first I said no, but then
thought that I might as well have the option available, simply because
I'd found that having the single drive Amstrad wasn't enough and that
I would really have been better off with the PCW8512 twin drive
version.

When I did get an ISP, I used web view only because I couldn't get OE
set up. It was Shadow who did that for me.

Once I started using the net and seeing people suggesting alternatives
to what I was using, I tried them. Some I liked, some I didn't.
That's why I use Dialog not OE and Mozilla not IE. It's why my next
PC could be a Mac or it could be Linux. It'll be sometime next year
that I make the change.

I think new users are very much at the mercy of whatever sales(wo)man
they see.

allowed me to buy my first pooter and I suspect that goes for 99.9% of home

Ali...

Had history taken a slightly different turn in 1980/1, you would have been
saying exactly the same thing about DRI, DrMail/GEM.

pooter users.

BoyPete...

No, no.................the future is Orange :)

Microsoft.