Can you believe 7 days, average 6 hours per day, to establish correct settings on Outlook Express? We've just survived (barely) this ordeal. I understand very little about the mathematics involved with figuring out the possible number of combinations when dealing with 5 pages that have from 4 to 8 possible choices on each one. I do know it's a lot. It took 7 technicians (in India and the Philippines) to set up our computers.
Okay, so who needs 4 computers? But that's not the point. We have 2 desktops and 2 laptops, one of the latter equipped with Vista. How many more possibilities are now added to settings?
It took 4 days (3-hour sessions twice a day on average) to set up the first desktop. By the time it worked, I was feeling pretty cocky, so I decided all I had to do was to duplicate the settings with a different e-mail address for the second one. Wrong.
Another day to get the second desktop going. Finally--good.
I moved on to my laptop, thinking I'd just duplicate the settings. Wrong again. Another half day. Well, now I'm really getting the hang of this. It should make setting up the second laptop with Vista less of a problem.
Definitely wrong again! 2 full days to discover that a virus protection had to be completely un-installed (not merely disabled) before that mail program would work. After my husband re-installed his protection, we heaved an exhausted sigh, and I returned to my desktop. It had been the first one set up and running.
You guessed it. Seven days into the exercise, and that computer would no longer work.
By this time I've become an expert at changing settings. This upsets the technicians on the phone because now I can make the changes faster than they can tell me what to do. Not to worry. I wouldn't bother the poor girls any more. By now I can do everything except set up and run in Safe Mode to make basic changes to the whole system (I do leave that to the experts). I spend another 2 hours changing Outlook Express settings, and at last -- the promised land of e-mail is mine again!
Now to claim the incentive monetary rewards promised in the promotion that started all this. You'll see more here if they don't come through. Believe me, the time spent doing this was worth a lot more than $225!
4 comments:
That is a lot of time! I've never been able to get my outlook express to work.
What do you use? I know there are a number of possibilities, but none seem as flexible and easy to archive (which I often find I want to do) as Outlook.
Joan, you amaze me. I'd never even try all that. We have a wonderful place called Computer Connection here and the folks there take care of almost all our problems.
However, my husband is pretty savvy with the computers and he often saves me from disaster when I need him.
We make a good team.
I am more up to date with the soft ware we use and with email, but he is the problem solver when something fails to work.
Glenda
Dear Glenda-- We have someone around here, I'm sure, who would have taken care of this, but the cheapest fellow is often not available for weeks, and the others charge upwards of $65/hour. I can't justify my time at that rate--unfortunately!
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