From OE to WLM... and then back to OE.

I use OE (on XP sp3) to manage:
- my ISP's POP3 email account,
- my hotmail account,
- my Gmail account,
- Usenet accounts trough my ISP's news server
- Usenet accounts trough my employer's news server

So, since MS has decided to stop supporting hotmail through OE,
I set out to test Live Mail ( - excluding "Live Search" of course ).
It properly installed itself on my system and converted my OE folder
environment to Live Mail.

Everything was there. Good job.

Some major and minor annoyances:
- An ugly interface, incompatible with the 'Windows Classic' theme,
window with rounded corners, poor font, ...
- Way too much white space between the folders in the folder view...
- no way to add to add a "Save as..." button to the mail reading toolbar...
- ...
I could probably learn to live with all this, but then I checked the
required disk space...

My OE folder had 79 Mb in 130 dbx-files, one dbx per folder.
This was 'converted' into a messy pile of logfiles, folders, eml-
files, and what not, worth 640 Mb of disk space.

Ten minutes later I had restored my Ghost backup and erased
every trace of Live Mail.

I think I will continue using OE and therefore give up on Hotmail.
Good grief.

Dirk Vdm

OE achieves its compactness due to combining messages in
aggregated .dbx files, which are somewhat fragile and easily
corrupted. With the low cost of hard drive space nowadays,
it makes sense to trade disk space for WLM's more robust
message storage method.

--
Gary VanderMolen, MS-MVP


"Dirk Van de moortel" <dirkvandemoortel@xxxxxx-NO-SperM.hotmail.com> wrote in message news:v1b_j.17523$zc6.16572@xxxxxx

That takes care of the folders issue. What about the ugly interface? What
were they thinking?

I decided to keep using WLM for preview and newsgroups, but I am back to
Outlook for permanent copies of mail. On exporting my mail from WLM to
Outlook, Outlook found Inbox errors and told me to run Scanpst.exe. This
really is an amateurish program. I am this far away from using Outlook
Express for newsgroups, heh. Who cares if a newsgroup .dbx file gets
corrupt or not? Just delete it and catch up later. I do like the ratings
button. I rated your post "Useful".

Cheers,

Earle

"Gary VanderMolen" <Gary@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:u0lQ#WovIHA.5288@xxxxxx

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. :-)
I have no problem with the WLM interface, but that may be because
I've used it daily for the past 15 months, so it seems natural now.

--
Gary VanderMolen, MS-MVP


"Earle Horton" <earleh_nospam_@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:B4F973C0-891C-44E4-A92E-C13AFC9D10B5@xxxxxx

Yes, low cost of diskspace.
And yes, dbx-files are somewhat fragile and perhaps easiliy
corrupted. But they are very easily backed up as well.
And I *never* had any problem with them to begin with.
By the way, moving the location of the files to another disk
results in a simple copy of the entire mess. It doesn't even
bother to remove the orginal files - low of cost of diskspace
at its best, but that is what I call Careless Design and
Programming.
But you probably have no idea what it takes to open and
close a file, let alone 10000 files. Go ahead, try it.
Replacing a system using a few hundred of files with a
system using thousands of them is inacceptible File System
Abuse. It goes out and it stays out - even if I have to give
up my hotmail access.

Dirk Vdm


Gary VanderMolen <Gary@xxxxxx> wrote in message
u0lQ%23WovIHA.5288@xxxxxx

The disk space overhead that you are seeing is temporary until the next
compacting of WLM. The frequency of this is controlled by Tools,
Options, Advanced, Maintenance.

Even after compacting, WLM will take more disk space than OE, but it's
more like 50% higher than the 700% you saw.

As Gary mentioned, the WLM data store is far more robust than OE. The
EML files are the raw messages. The log files are for recovery. The
amount of this will depend on how much message updating has occurred
(importing, downloading, moving. copying, etc.) has occurred since the
last compact. After compacting you'll find that the log files have
dramatically reduced in space.


--

Mike - http://pages.prodigy.net/michael_santovec/techhelp.htm



"Dirk Van de moortel" <dirkvandemoortel@xxxxxx-NO-SperM.hotmail.com>
wrote in message news:v1b_j.17523$zc6.16572@xxxxxx

FYI...

WebDAV Protocol Deprecation Delayed - Status Update
http://liveunplugged.spaces.live.com...90CA!222.entry

Responding to Customer Feedback - Disabling DAV
http://emailsupport.spaces.live.com/...708!5745.entry



--
...winston
ms-mvp mail


"Dirk Van de moortel" <dirkvandemoortel@xxxxxx-NO-SperM.hotmail.com> wrote in message news:x%k_j.4003

I tried it again - on a spare system now.
Yes, compacting the store results in the removal of that 200 Mb file in the
backup folder, the creation of a new 170 Mb mail.MSMessageStore,
and keeping the 10000+ small eml-files and nws-files all over the place,
resulting in some 230 Mb of storage.
I can live with a 130% increase in diskspace, but I refuse to live with
a 12400% increase in files count.

Cheers and thanks for trying to convince me :-)
Dirk Vdm


Michael Santovec <michael_santovec@xxxxxx> wrote in message
OXvDlFrvIHA.4736@xxxxxx

Good news! Thanks :-)

Dirk Vdm

....winston <winstonmvp@xxxxxx> wrote in message
%23zKOWfvvIHA.3680@xxxxxx

I wasn't trying to convince you. I have no personal stake in what mail
program you, or anyone else uses.

But if someone is having a problem with a program and I know how to
either fix the problem or workaround it, I'll help them make the best of
whatever program they are using or trying to use.

--

Mike - http://pages.prodigy.net/michael_santovec/techhelp.htm



"Dirk Van de moortel" <dirkvandemoortel@xxxxxx-NO-SperM.hotmail.com>
wrote in message news:kbD_j.10002$Zs3.8785@xxxxxx