Screenshots

jeff,
PC fair is jusr around the corner. a perfect excuse though the prices are no different from low yatt.

JEFF OOI says: Aaaah...!

jeff,

are you sure its the PC? i hope there aren't any sprinklers in ur house, or if u know any kungfu masters or other stuff like that who could help u :)

JEFF OOI says: Aaaah.... ideas! Ideas!

jeff,

let me see... Paypal donation from ur readers? I'll chip in five Ringgit...

JEFF OOI says: Thanks but no need lah. I will see if I can convince my wify... ;-)

Ok, Ok, I won't send you anymore email, cause I know you won't be able to read it ;-) he...he...he...

Probably need a secretary, maybe a team of part time secretaries ;-)

I wonder if we devise an automated email reply system, just thinking aloud.

time to filter your email jeff.. :)

try swimming away or make use of the thunderstorms of late! ;)

Just say that by getting a new PC, you'll be able to respond to the mails faster and hence have more time with her :P

Hope that helps :)

Jeff,

We have a big decision:

1. Get a new PC now and not bother about Vista
2. Wait for Vista
3. Get a Mac and not wait for Leopard (OS X 10.5) as Vista is almost like Tiger (OS X 10.4)
4. Wait for Leopard in April.

Decisions - I am on #3 and #4.....

JEFF OOI says: I have been looking at Apple for a number of years, but really haven't taken the forbidden bite. Need Eve to tempt me further.

And then Leopard should be having hot-swap between OS X and Windows.

What about Lightroom and Aperture? - for the shooters.

JEFF OOI says: That's REALLY my MAJOR consideration. I used the 10.2mp Nikon D200 and shoot RAW all the time. A RAW file will be around 16MB, saved in TIFF will be around 30~60MB. Managing the unprocessed images on Adobe Bridge really put a strain on my present 2003-version P4/2.8Mhz/1Gb RAM config. Opening a file itself will take about 3 minutes, let alone batch processing a day's shoot. The other side of the story is that I love Aperture but I don't own an Apple. Tough love, tough love.

The soon to be announced new super smartphone iPhone - connects better to Mac? and suppose to have keyboard AND inkwell (Newton real handwriting recognition) plus camera plus iPod all in one.

Whaaaaaat to do??

Aarrrrgh! - have to AGAIN fine tune the decision matrix and SWAT analysis.

And then..

And also...

Damn - tying myself in a knot (again)

BTW I think Digital Mall (?) at Section 14 (Old Metrojaya) has same pricing as Low Yatt without the hassles.

JEFF OOI says: I visited section 14 Digital Mall last week, To me it was a letdown. The breadth and width of good product mix isn't there. Hope they could improve or else don't position it as the Low Yat of PJ.

Happy grovelling (to the wifey) - I'll help but the old kneecaps are bleeding.

JEFF OOI says: I got the drify, dude. ;-)
BR.

Hi Jeff,

I don't think it's the problem with the PC though the new PC will help to makes things faster but still, you only have 2 hands.

You need more people to help you, like becoming your moderator... You filter those mail and send to specific email account and let those guys moderate or even reply email for you.

But of course, they need to think alike you. ;)

Uncle Jeff,

The question to get a new pc is irrelevant. This is webmail & its not about pc speed etc. (however, your pc should be a decent one to start with)

What you should do is to develop a web based communication that deals with this spam once & for all. Eg. Blogspot's Commenting system.

I mean, giving away your email (jeffooi.screenshots@gmail.com) does not help either.

I used to think this way until i bought 6 computers (2 of them are macs :) ) & problems like this are not solved. I just got more organized.

cheers :)

show off! hahaha

Do you have any kids? Perhaps it's time for him/her to have his/her personal computer?

jeff, what is your PC spec. now? basically i don't think you need a new PC.

Using web mail greatly reduce your performance. Try use Outlook. You can find it already at your windows i guess, you only need to get a POP/SMTP mail account.

Outlook allow you to sync all your mail from the mail server to your local PC and for sure you don't need to wait too long for the mail to be loaded out as the interface and mail are at local (your PC). Once your mail are sync to local you can even manage your mail while not connecting to the internet.

Get a copy of Windows defender @ MS website (it is free) to avoid those worms to track your email address or send email on your behalf.

Hope this might help you.

KY, you make a good point mate. Jeff, if it's only your mail that bothers you, then go Outlook mate. Gmail POP/SMTP settings, do a sync with the server a few times a day. you can also separate your items via topic. So tell everyone, from now on, if they want to give private feedback on a topic, put the corresponding topic in their subject field and mail to you la. the you set up all those simple rules on Outlook and you can breathe a little easier. all your mails go to the right locations. What you need? You internet connection must be steady when synching. You can hit send/receive and go for a walk mate! come back, all ready for you. your data back up, archiving, etc all becomes a lot easier. just need hard disk space. i know, your gmail GBs might be wasted, but hey... win some, lose some. 101 options with Outlook. can do all kinds of stunts, so, all the readers can also give ideas on how to manage the data. so yea, good point KY.

JEFF OOI says: Thnaks Bryant & KY. The only thing GMail attracts me is the storage size and the ability to perform internal archive search. Tough love again.

Happy Thanksgiving yo :-).

As for better managing information and your schedule, I personally recommend backpack (http://www.backpackit.com/). Hope that will at least solves some of your problems.

Jeff,

Get a Mac :p
Easier to convince your wife... PCs can't run MacOS X, well it can but you will take forever setting it up, and it's not legal. So the best way to run OS X, get a Mac :)

Easy - learn how to manage your time. Set spaces aside where you are dedicated to answering e-mails only. Prioritise. Get an assistant (who should share your values) to filter the necessary from the unnessary. Get a coach (hehe - what about me!!)

And about 500 tips more, if you are interested.

Those who think running a blog makes easy meat for self-censorship should ask how someone with a fulltime job can spare time let alone energy to read and screen 4,362 entries, what more those which inadvertently fall into the spam column. In this regard, it would be helpful for the local legal eagles to give a point-of-view on the US supreme court decision vs-a-vs blogger not responsible for poster content.

I understand posts into the blog are also routed to the email inbox. Maybe to reduce the inbox, that feature should be severed, unless the process to track IP source is part of that function.

JEFF OOI says: Thanks Neil. I have detached the inbox alert of every commentary posting about two years ago. It could have floored me had I continued to do so. The over 4000 unread emails, are already spam-filtered to a certain degree. The 4000 may contain gems that the "Little Birds" sent me. Tough love again.

The downside would be the blogger will have to directly read his own blog every now and then in order to filter and that might be dicey if streamyx hangs in some places.

These are operational issues that policymakers should be equally mindful about.

Get a Mac :-)

And possibly, setup IMAP on jeffooi.com, and skip using gmail.

I'll be back soon enough, we can talk...

Jeff,

Check this out on how to clear up your gmail.

http://lifehacker.com/software/gmail/how-to-free-up-space-in-gmail-215191.php

Good luck.

Jeff, you said: "But how should I convince my wife to get me a new one?"

As I see it you got a bigger problem than pcs, unread mail and spams. Sounds like you might be having spasms soon!!!! But then again many of us might just tell you, welcome to the club!!!

Just curious if those mails appearing in your Inbox are spams as well (if there is, only a handful). The Spam folder is the easiest to handle. It takes a few clicks in less than 30 seconds to clear and you don't have to worry about genuine emails - Gmail's filtering criteria is quite accurate.

JEFF OOI says: The spam rate is about 100 per day. The Gmail spam filter will take care by itself, rather efficiently, those some still slipped through. The unread mails are a gem. They contained various alerts, reports, images and even multimedia materials that readers sent me.

Why would you want to blame the junk mails on your PC? They are not related at all.

*One* of the reasons you have so much spam is because you list your email on your website, and spam robots that spider thru webpages have harvested your email.

JEFF OOI says: Let the spam filter work on its own. I just need to empty the spam box onece in a while. but the embedded email link was meant to be a service to my readers so that they could just click and launch their mail client to start writing mails to me.

Perhaps you should consider using an image-based email rather than text-based.

As for speed, go for the speediest chip, you know what that is, and Lightroom will be more efficient.

Change you email address, for a start.

JEFF OOI says: The email has become too famous/visible to change now.

Hi Jeff

I was drinking my coffee and reading these comments when I read Observer's. I almost spilled the drink over my PC - I was laughing so hard!

I really love some of your commenters. They are bloody witty & funny.

tell your wife that you want to launch a free pc drive for the less fortunate and you need to take the lead
this is in line with the giving festive period
hope this works
perhaps even get streamyx to chip in giving free internet access to them.
can start with shelter home, orphange

Hmm how about this Jeff. A commenter noted on changing your email address.

I'll add on saying that you don't necessarily need to change your email address. How about redirecting the 'more important ones' that Little Birds sent you to another secure email address .

While the current one (the gmail one) you maintain it for other stuff; comments from readers, etc etc.

JEFF OOI says: ...but the embedded email link was meant to be a service to my readers so that they could just click and launch their mail client to start writing mails to me.

Perhaps a combination of image-based email address and a "form submit" on php with captcha... Anyway, you've sufficiently addressed it below.

JEFF OOI says: The email has become too famous/visible to change now.

Afraid not only your email is "too famous"... ;-)

Jeff:

"P4/2.8Mhz/1Gb RAM config"

no wonder its crawlling 2.8MHz.. back in 8088's eh? ;)

anyway get your set 2GB RAM and WD Raptor drive. That would speed things up.

JEFF OOI says: Oops, it's 2.8Ghz... shy shy mistake.

I think you can use the filter options on those junkies. Like...

if Mail subject contains XXXXXX then Delete it from server.

=)

Hi Jeff, can you access your emails (gmail) via another computer to clear mails in the interim while you get a new pc? You are welcome to come to my office in the interim to clear your mails. You know where to contact me.

I still recall encountering the corrosive effect of rat urine on the circuitry of an electronic organ once, a number of years back. If you cannot persuade one of the rodents to co-operate in the right place, I won't be surprised if the human variety will still do the job, albeit slower and with less 'aromatic' effect.

Or you can trake some time and configure present PC to be a lady's dream machine, with massive database of recipes and bookmarks to cooking sites, all her favourite music, wallpaper of whatever she may find most attractive. You get the drift?

Then engineer some excuse for her to 'accidently' see what is there.

Then, "Alamak! You mean you want ME to let you use this computer ah? But... but... but... OK lor, if you really want to use it, then I have NO CHOICE but to see if I can find something on which to do my work lor."

hehehehhe...a big baby..everyone loves getting a new PC...and the obstacle of WIFE....they understand their highly complicated hirachy of SHOES buying ..SALES dropping and Haggling...but they don't at all understand why we need a NEW PC !!

Dear Jeff,

i suggest you wait till next year. Quad COre is out so the current Core 2 Duo is surely alot cheaper and XMS2 Cosair dual channel rams is getting cheaper too..go for 2x 1gig because they run faster dual channel.

JEFF OOI says: Core 2 Quad on QX6700? Cool man! That's my dream!

Also i hope X1950XTX ATI display Card will drop a mountain. with that, i am sure you'll pop a 260HDD with 18X SAMSUNG DVD (lightscribe) burner and maybe a DVI Samsung 19's 900NT monitor for those emails and your pod cast.

i recommend you using Gigabytes Quad Core Ready Motherboard and Creative audilgy sound card :)

should cost you no more than RM 3500 to 4000
Happy surfing then....

(seriously, wait next year for better stuff..at least is 2007 items)

oh, i forgotten to add, all
OLD PC's a treasure to LINUX user...

time to pick up that Linux 101.....i'll also be happy to take the old PC off from you for a fee...heheeh..you'll have to pay me

JEFF OOI says: Wah. jialat.

u may want to try SCSI HDD in stead of SATA, get the 15krpm SAS HDD. but extra $$$

Don't think this has anything to do with you getting spamed but if you're gonna splash for a new PC, you should...yes, you should...get a Mac.

Go visit Machines at MidValley. Bring the missus along. Show her how beautiful the Mac would look in the house. Try it. It worked on my missus :) And now we have 2 Macs at home.

JEFF OOI says: Envy, envy...

Dont Use Gamil or other free e-mail, Get a paid E-mail for u. Then it wil be more safer with e-mail Backup and E-mail Defence and get a Mac :)

Oh, how I envy you guys for talking an alien language - X1950XTX ATI, OS X 10.5 & 10.4, P4/2.8Mhz/1Gb RAM config, gobbledygook, etc!

Oh, how I hate you guys ;-) for making feel small!

Where the hell is Neil's 'green crab' wristwatch - in the realisation of my sheer PC ignorance, I need it real fast.

But wait, I may have a solution for Jeff - what about that 'D' for 'Delightful' button - you know, the one they call 'DELETE'!

yahhh! jacky's back!

hit 'refresh' of:

http://tinyurl.com/ye9mus

for our mutual friend - the Yautja.

yes, throw it away. : )

Here is some valid reason
1. To save some bucks before GST implement in year 2007.

2. To get year 2006 RM500 income tax rebate for your PC.

Mmm...all these computer talk. My idea from a woman's point of view is pretty simple. How to convince your wife? Try and recall what she has been telling you about certain things that she likes. Then go out there and buy it for her (of course, I take it that she's not asking for the moon!) When she's happy, you'll be happy! Ha ha ha....

A few of the 101 reasons:

1) Honey, my porno collection is getting too large and it's slowing down the PC! I need Quad-Core!

2) Honey, everytime I watch porn using DVD, my computer jerks!

3) Oh sorry honey.. I need a new pc, because my computer is too slow to run Microsoft Access... I need it to manage my porno collection.

Jeff,
First, encode the e-mail on your site. Go to
http://automaticlabs.com/products/enkoderform/
It's free, and takes about 2 minutes.
Second step... get a paid account. I can put you in touch with a company that will sort out a Managed Exchange account. They are great for people (and small companies) who don't have the resources to set up their own Exchange Server. You can have either a web based account or a PC and web based one. Your mail is on their server and is therefore always available wherever you are (just like g-mail) but the PC/web based option also allows you to have a version on as many computers as you want using the latest version of Outlook.
Their spam filter works well, and you just need to have a quick look to make sure nothing you might want has been put in by mistake.
You do have a limit of 100MB at any one time, but if you practise good housekeeping and archive regularly, it is not really a problem.