Byte by Bite

E-mail program shows resistance to change

by Marv Dealy

Published June 3, 2005

I complained last week about my e-mail program (Thunderbird) and the headaches it was giving me.

I actually began the research project to find out what kind of problems I was going to encounter when I migrated from Thunderbird to some e-mail program from that small, warm, fuzzy, family-owned company from Redmond, Washington.

Naturally, I found that Microsoft Outlook wasn’t going to make it easy. I did some Googling and found that if I told Outlook that I was trying to import from Thunderbird that it wouldn’t have a clue what to do.

I noted that it would, however, import from either Eudora or Netscape, so I assumed that the switchover would be somewhat ok. I don’t make these kind of changes lightly, as I have large piles of e-mail from you 14 faithful readers, more from my clients, and pictures my dad sends me of either his or mom’s latest Dr. generated scars and bandages.

I don’t want to lose any of these “filed” e-mails, much less the address book I’ve built over time, etc. So, I wasn’t in a hurry to make the move from Thunderbird to Outlook.

Well, don’t you know, my e-mail program started working. All by it’s little own self. I looked into the possibility of some automatic update having downloaded and installed itself, and I didn’t find that as an option I could have selected should I have wanted to. Which I wouldn’t have – I’d like a little more control over downloads and installs than that.

In any event, the problems I’d encountered appear to have disappeared as mysteriously as they began. Thunderbird again opens smartly when told to, there’s no waiting time while the inbox mysteriously rebuilds, and when I click on an e-mail now it just shows up. Now we’re back where we started, and I’m loving it that I didn’t have to go the Microsoft route.

Concerning my problems with Thunderbird, reader Dan Buckman writes, “My Thunderbird works just great so do not reply to this message. Can I get whatever you've got by just writing you?”

Well, Dan, I’m pretty sure that by replying to you via this newspaper that I won’t endanger your version of Thunderbird. And in any event the cure seems to be wait a bit, it’ll go away. I know that’s not very satisfactory, but it’ll have to do for now.

Dan also writes in response to my complaining about people dropping used computer equipment at night at my Big Oak Flat office: “Why don't you tell everybody to tape a $5 bill to each unit of junk and then save us all the trip to the dump?”

Well, Dan, since The Folks In Charge have seen fit to lift the egregiously high fees formerly charged when you gave the disposal guys your old computer monitor, you don’t even need to tape a $5 bill to it, just pay the per pound charges. This includes that old TV console in the basement you’ve been meaning to get rid of for the last 20 years as well. The key, in my mind anyway, is don’t dump it at my office.

If you want to stop and see the stack of old monitors I have on display in a former vegetable display rack, be aware that if you try to add to the collection that the water hose formerly used to mist the broccoli still works.

Speaking of bad stuff coming out of discarded monitors, reader Mike Lamasney writes: “I believe that ‘as much as 4 pounds of lead can leak from a’ CRT. But what about a LCD? What sort of hazardous materials are there in an LCD that cause them to be included in the hazardous waste categories?”

Well, Mike, while you and I think of LCDs and portable computers, we shouldn’t forget the coffee makers, cell phones and washing machines with an LCD. While the main hazard upon disposal from smaller devices may come principally from the battery powering the device, I couldn’t find much information about the dangers of disposing of LCDs from larger items, such as portable computers.

It’s well known that CRTs contain bad stuff from lead to dust to mercury, but I couldn’t Google that much about the hazards LCDs present.

I found an article by Martin Prösler at c’t (http://www.heise.de/ct/english/99/12/096/) that “liquid crystals were and are under suspicion of being a health hazard. 50,000 liquid crystal substances are known, about 500 are key components for LCD technology.”

Prösler continues: “A German company produces more than 300 of the liquid crystals used worldwide: Merck KgaA (www.merck.de), Darmstadt, ships to almost half of the world market, holds 2,000 patents and has an surprisingly strong hold on the information about these very interesting technological substances. Currently there are no toxicological tests from independent institutes, and thus the comments of this chemical enterprise are left hanging in the air.”

“‘There is no danger if the LC displays break at home or at the disposal company’ assures Dr. Werner Becker, Technical Marketing Manager at Merck. ‘We tested our liquid crystals for toxic substances. Only one of the substances proved to be carcinogenic and therefore it is not used. Eight substances caused irritation during animal testing and are only used diluted.’ According to Merck the derived mixtures for LC displays could be declared as ‘not damaging to health’ after the EU (European Union) guidelines for hazardous materials. The German enterprise assumes that the liquid crystals of both of the most important competitors - Chisso and Lodic from Japan with market shares of about 20 percent respectively - are similar. And a small group of Chinese manufacturers ‘is following old Merck recipes anyway.’”

So what’s the real danger lurking in an LCD? Hopefully one of you alert readers (be a lert - we need more lerts) already knows the inside skinny here and will share with the rest of us.