Configuring GMail's IMAP in Microsoft e-mail applications

Hello the lucky few who got GMail IMAP activated.

When you follow GMail configuration steps outlined in Supported IMAP Client List
you would be able to use IMAP in your Microsoft e-mail applications ,
But the experience won't be smooth,

You will encounter following problems.

• Headers with Full message will be downloaded by default in all folders,
  
• Sent Items folder won't contain the mails that you sent in past in GMail.
• Deleted Items folder won't have the mails that you deleted in GMail.
• Long folder tree
  

What this boils to down to is

• Inefficient Bandwidth Usage (When you have huge amounts of mail)
• Lesser integration

We will now see how to optimally configure Microsoft e-mail applications to access GMail's IMAP.

First configure GMail's IMAP in Microsoft e-mail clients as per the Google instructions outlined in Supported IMAP Client List

Next -> Right click All Mail, Spam, Starred folders and choose Synchronization settings -> "Don't Synchronize".

Next -> Right click All Mail, Spam, Starred folders and choose "Hide"

Now comes the important step.

Click Tools -> Accounts and Choose the IMAP account and click "Properties"
Go to IMAP Tab
Under the "Special Folders" remove the tick near "Store special folders on IMAP server"
Click OK.

Now remove the "Sent Items" "Deleted Items" and "Junk e-mails" folders by right-clicking on them and choose "Delete"
A dialog box will pop up asking you to confirm the action. Click "Yes"
You might receive an error, don't worry.

Thats it,

From now on

• Your e-mail client won't be wasting your Bandwidth and Time downloading mails from All Mails, Spam, Trash, folders.
• There won't be any duplicated folders in different names,
  
• Tighter integration

Note : This guide was written for Windows Live Mail, The steps mention here may slightly differ in other Microsoft e-mail applications,

Opensuse 10.3 does lot of tricks that needs so many clicks.

I am a seasoned Opensuse user from SUSE 9.1 days.

Until then i was a redhat fan.

Before trying Opensuse 10.3 i tried Ubuntu 7.04 that came with my computer magazine.
Except its looks, i was pretty impressed with it.

Then i wanted to return to Opensuse for checking out how cool Opensuse 10.3 experience would be.

I'll admit from here itself that i am Less-Is-More fan so i downloaded Opensuse 10.3 Gnome Edition to install on Intel Pentuim 4 3.4Ghz rig, having 1GB Ram and ATI X800 GPU,

The system also has Windows Vista Ultimate edition installed..

Normally i won't burn cds dvds for installing Opensuse distributions. I'll just download the ISO's and configure grub to boot from the iso.

I was very happy and comfortable in trying out Opensuse 10.3 in just single cd,

Installation

Installation went fairly smooth. No issues, But, as many distribution nowadays does it would have been very nice if Yast automatically added Windows Partitions in fstab automatically,
I hope Yast will add Windows Partitions only when i use its proposals. I was bored to do this kind of after installation tinkering in the current age of GNU/Linux.

Also as some reviewers noted, Yast is asking too many questions.

System restarted after installation for running the post installation routines.
Grub showed a nice bootsplash, but only in grub bootsplash appeared.
It seems it is the consequence of installing from ISO.
Yast didn't add frame buffer resolution into grub. That was the culprit. But i am tired in fixing this manually for each release.

For fixing this bug i fired up Startup Logs from Yast, but to my surprise the app started with an empty log, even after choosing the correct file, the log windows was empty.
Then i opened the bootlog via vt, cat correctly displayed the log,
Surely a bug in the Yast Log Viewer.

I had to fiddle with sax2 for hours for getting my lcd monitor tuned correctly. Ok, i don't want blame Opensuse for that,

Desktop

Finally i enabled compiz, I am surprised to see that it required a logout/login, Novell the lead developer of compiz itself not employing advanced techniques when Ubuntu n'all enables compiz instantly,

The updated Gnome Main Menu looks great. Very very user friendly.
One suggestion, many users doesn't finding the right click functionality to add favorites add to startup, and blaming application browsers, so add a visible add to favorite button.

The Update Notifier utility also worked well, but it is difficult to see what updates are available.

Multimedia

Installing codecs was made is with the 1-Click Installation method.
It installs everything, even dvd decryption plugin in a signe ymp.

Great job Opensuse Team.

Installing ATI drivers failed for me, but i won't blame Opensuse for this, it failed in Ubuntu too.

Yast

The Gnome-ified Yast control center looked great, very much consistent.
The problem is as some reviewers suggested it highly duplicates the gnome control center,

Individual Yast modules worked well. But the UI of the individual modules was not at all pleasing.
I wonder how much HIG the individual modules followed.

My ISP's dns server is not any fast, so i tried to switch to opendns. But it took lot of tries to successfully switch to, because Default Route setting was located in a weired location in wizard.
It again makes me wonder how much HIG compliant these gtk based Yast configuration modules are following.

Package Management

1-Click Installation worked superbly. It laid a great framework for future.
GNU/Linux Package management framework was already consistent and rock-solid comparing to other platforms, now Opensuse 10.3 marked a milestone in making the framework a child's play.

Some issues still there, 1-Click Installation doesn't care about already installed packages.
That is if i already installed the same version of Pidgin, 1-Click installation won't check the existence and downloaded and install Pidgin again.

Also toooooooo many popups are coming and going in the process of adding a repo and installing a package,

I suggest embed the progress bar/message into the wizard itself. Instead of showing the the
progress bar/message in a new window.

GTK2 based Yast Package Installer's UI also totally different and highly non-intuitive,
It won't allure to us it repeatedly,
Also why is it unnecessarily refreshing the repositories at the startup itself.

I will be very happy if Novell retire the SuSEconfig scripts completely, Most of the other distributions are doing well even without such a technology.

Nautilus was configured to open ,rpm package in the file-roller by default, i dunno how this kind of tinkering work missed the eyes of the development and testing process.

Also it would be nice if Novell retire its age old Industrial Icon set for gnome and use Tango Icon set by default,

Performance

Opensuse 10.3 highly lessened the startup time. It is a great leap comparing to the previous versions.

But i am not very happy in the startup performance of Gnome. It got worse after enabling compiz.

Yast Package Management stack has greatly improved in speed.
Adding repositories was breeze.

Application startup times also was not any instant, it took 2-3 seconds to start common gnome applications such gedit, calculator etc,

Conclusion

Opensuse is a solid feature rich distribution,
Opensuse 10.3 is put out with the latest technologies from the open source community and from the Novell team but without polishing well, atleast the Gnome edition.