PrimeTel’s PrimeHome Triple Play

Today I became a happy owner of PrimeTel PrimeHome installation, also known as Triple Play. Triple Play is this new way of bundling together loads of television channels, ADSL Internet connection, and really cheap telephony. It’s said to cost only 25 CYP month, but I got lucky and received a promotion offer of free installation and 3 month of service free of charge as well.

I didn’t have any time to play with it just yet, but it looks quite good. Here are the things that I’ve noticed during my short experience:

  • Television has an electronic TV guide with a time schedule for all programs for all channels. This is very handy.
  • Internet connection was way to easy to install. Just plugged the Ethernet cable straight into my laptop and I was done.
  • Sound quality in the telephone is a bit less than CYTA’s. There is some minor background noise all the time. But it’s not as bad as it can sound.
  • Switching channels on TV is a lot slower than before. This will need some getting used to. But it’s a fair trade for not having to configure any of the channels, crispy clear quality of image and sound, TV guide, and the selection of channels.

I’ll probably post more about it later, when I’d played more with it, but don’t hold your breath on that one.

P.S.: I might be somewhat biased being an employee of PrimeTel Ltd., and having received the package free of charge (installation + 3 month). Take my words with a grain of salt. And pepper.

GMail migration – done

I have finished my migration to GMail process. I have all my email archives uploaded, marked as read, and most of the messages labeled. Of course, as with any migration, there were some rough edges and few messages just didn’t make it through, while a few others were dumped into archives without being properly categorized. But overall I am happy. Those few messages that didn’t get through were probably useless anyway. And categorization is not vital anymore with Google search engine behind the inbox.

GMail usage for 15/08/2006

‘All Mail’ suggests that I have slightly more than 20,000 discussions. In terms of space usage, I am at 42%1156 MB used out of 2754 MB. That’s not too bad. My current new mail rate is not that high, and GMail is constantly increasing the size of the mailbox. I think it’ll be enough. If nothing else, I know how have a lot of stuff that I can delete to clean up some space. Some of the messages date as far back as 1999 – surely there’s something that I won’t even miss.

Quick GMail update

I am doing the biggest email move ever. I am migrating all of my email to GMail. That includes archives, which, in some cases, have threads dating back to 1999. That’s A LOT OF email.

Obviously, my GMail account is a huge mess right now. I’ll try to clear it up as soon as possible, but for the meantime, if I miss an email from you, please, stay with me. I’ll get it al in order ASAP. Note thought, that just the upload process will take around two to three days.

The script I’m using for this process is Mark Lyon’s GMail Loader. I’m usin gthe older .4 version, because I didn’t have enough Python librarires for the GUI. Neither did I need it. The script works like a charm.

I love GMail

I have fully moved to GMail. I have yet to import my existing archives, but I lovin’ it already as it is. My exim+procmail+mutt setup is great, but GMail is better for my current needs. It is, of course, less configurable, but Things That I Really Care About ™ (TTIRCA) do work and need practically no configuration.

Stars, labels and filters are easier to use than my previous configuration. Contact list is better – complete with pictures and total integration. Management of multiple accounts is easier done – by default GMail replies from the correct address. Searching the mailbox is better and faster – after all it is Google we are talking about – nothing can beat that! Attachment handling with image previews and Word document automatic convertions to HTML are beautiful. Multilanguage spellchecking is nice. And there is even that Google Chat thingy too. And, of course, it all works faster off the Google server farm than from my home server.

For the time being, I am really happy about my email. And I couldn’t care less for the Big Brother issue. At least, not right now.

Ok, if you one of those people who need to hear something bad, I’ll give that. If I could change one thing about GMail, it would be with Quick Contacts. Currently, if I specify that I want a person to be included in Quick Contacts, I get as many entries, as the number of this person’s email addresses. That’s just wrong. For the Quick Contact I need only one email. I can be asked to specify which, or the default one can be used, or the most frequently used one – I don’t care. Just make it one, not all of them. That’s it. This is my only complain.

My mother is getting technical

While my mother was here, I was planning to dedicate some time to fight her computer illiteracy. As always, my bad planning and her sly (sneaky?) nature left us with about 40 minutes before her plane for all the teachings.

During those few minutes I only managed the bare minimum. Firstly, I installed Skype on her computer, registered her and configured her account, and made it to autostart in Online mode all the time. I gave her a brief lecture on what it is and how to use it (just the chatting part, no VoIP). Then we moved on to GMail. She had an account there for a long time, but never used it. I just showed her how to read messages, reply to messages, and compose new ones, and our time was up. No filtering, no labels, no archives.

While I was talking, she was mostly writing. With a pan on a piece of paper. She wrote almost a full page, re-drawing the icons and putting arrows all over the place. Too bad. When I came back from the airport, I noticed this piece of paper on my living room table, exactly where she left it.

After all these, imagine how surprised and proud I am to find my mother logged in to Skype every day for hours. She is chatting with me, participating in the conferences, and doing a terrific job. She also figured out the whole GMail thing. Probably not with labels and filters yet, but she does send emails. She even figured out the attachments, which I didn’t even explain to her.

I know that user interfaces are getting more intuitive with each year, but I still have to say – Ma, I’m proud of ya! Ya doing great!