best setup?

[SLEE]

i own a HP laptop which i bought from john lewis for the 2 year guarantee. it is at this moment though being repaired by hp due to the usb ports all failing which is such a pain. i am now without my own computer. ive had to borrow a laptop to keep me going but i cant really set up it and do my work properly.

so the question is what would you do? do i buy a cheap desktop or a cheap laptop for backup in the future and for me to use for now or do i try and sell my laptop when it gets back and buy a dell for example with the support where they come to you and fix it there and then? what do you guys do?

how do you set up your email so you can run it on more than one computer? imap?

[Chris H]

gmail

[SLEE]

so do you have your mail accounts forward there or can you set it up to run your accounts using gmail? ive got pop3 accounts i need to run not sure if tey support imap or not.

[Chris H]

Gmail checks my email accounts via pop3 and downloads any messages. Then it deletes them from the server.

For sending mail I just get gmail to send it from a different email address, but it still keeps the gmail stuff in the headers somewhere.

Works fine, labels system is nice and spam filtering is the best I've come across.

[sickpuppy]

how do you set up your email so you can run it on more than one computer? imap?

You can tell POP to leave the mail on the server. I keep one main machine that downloads and removes mail from the server. Any other machines download the mail but leave it on the server. I backup from the mail machine.

IMAP will keep the mail on the server. But it'll probably have to be a work server or your own. ISPs wouldn't put up with the amount of storage required for IMAP I wouldn't have thought.

[SLEE]

hmm gives me food for thought i think i probably wont go for the gmail if it leaves things in the header but sickpuppy's idea about pop3 sounds ok.

so do you think i should get a backup macine then? laptop or desktop?
do you think as it will be a backup it needs to be a high spec?

[Ben]

hmm gives me food for thought i think i probably wont go for the gmail if it leaves things in the header but sickpuppy's idea about pop3 sounds ok.

so do you think i should get a backup macine then? laptop or desktop?
do you think as it will be a backup it needs to be a high spec?

The things in the header aren't visable to Joe Bloggs, only geeks who go looking. I use Gmail for all of my emails.

[SLEE]

hmmm might be worth looking into more then - thanks
do you run 2 computers?

[Ben]

hmmm might be worth looking into more then - thanks
do you run 2 computers?

At least, I can use any computer - and I can see the same emails, and I can delete, send or read and the changes are updated. I tend to use Thunderbird on my laptop or desktop or a combination of that and the normal web-mail as well.

[SLEE]

what about keeping your work files central? are you able to work on any computer on any project or do you keep them local to the computer?

[Matt]

for files etc tr windows home server- measn you can backup your main pc to the box, and access your file etc through a webbased interface if your away from home, so its like a second machine and a backup solution in one.

[SLEE]

not a bad idea might look into that as well. so much to think about!