New Computer 3

Ah changing computer systems is SO much fun. 

My Corel Photo processing software arrive in the mail today.  I will save installing that for later.

I am obsessed with the email problems tonight.  I finally CAN access cavebear2118, marksmews2118, and yardenman2118.  My problem now is that I have to log into one, read it, log out, log in to another, read it, log out, log in to the third and read that.  And each time, I had to look at "AOL Today" newsfeeds which are mostly clickbaits for ads. 

So I called AOL with 2 questions.  I had a tech support person on the line immediately; no complaints about that.  First question was "can I arrange my AOL mail display so that I go directly to my inbox"?   Apparently not.  I wasn't surprised, they make their living off ads.  They even admitted they understand that I may not read any ads and just go to the inbox, but they want their shot at my attention, so they won't let me  change my scene.

My 2nd question was about the annoyance of having to log in and out of accounts in order to read the mail in the 3 email accounts.  I had tried to log into one, save it as a bookmark, log into the 2nd and save THAT bookmarked.  It doesn't work.  The only AOL email address is non-specific to account names. 

They do have a solution to that called AOL password manager so that all 3 accounts (for I am already paying $5 per account per month) would show on a single menu for easy switching between email accounts.  For another $5 per month.  That might be total or per account, the tech guy wasn't sure.  OK, he's not in Billing...

And THEN, he surprised me.  My AOL help is free only for 30 days.  And guess what they want after that?  $5 per month.  They are obsessed with $5 per month charges. LOL!  He DID tell me (on prompting by me) that I can get a lot of the tech help for free if I call AOL in the US during their normal business hours. 

I'm going to look for a better email system.  I wanted to keep the verizon.net addresses for convenience (and I'm sure that is part of AOL business plan).  And I have to question the value of having the 3 email addresses.  I set up 3 on the Mac mail from verizon because it was free and convenient.

I discovered I had 12,000 saved emails.  Mostly cat blog and personal blog comments forwarded there.  I deleted those down to 500, mostly so that I kept at least one who has every emailed me.  Those are stored on the Mac.  I can look those up anytime and just retype them into the PC mail as needed.  I might just try to print them out, probably only 12 pages and stick them in a binder.

One lesson I've learned from all this is to just never call tech support during non-working hours.  I'm not saying anything bad about the overseas tech support folks.  They do their best.  But they don't have full access to the US corporate information about my accounts or  ability to change things as freely.

As an example, I spend 4 hours one night with an overseas call center about email passwords and they could not solve the problem.  A US AOL tech the next morning did it in 15 minutes and it worked. 

So at night, I'm going to just gradually transfer files from the Mac to the PC 8Gb at a time with the flashdrive, and leave the tech questions to daytime hours. 

So I think I will end this post and just go install the Corel Paintshop photo processing program and see how that works... I sure want to post cat blog pictures again!

7AM update:  It was a struggle to load the Corel Paintshop CD.  I kept asking me about Drive E and I couldn't find a Drive E.  The solution was disgustingly simple.  My Mac CD loader is centered and you can't drop a CD without it falling into place properly.  The PC CD loader is off centered slightly and you have to push it down onto the holder. 

A new user of computers would have done that. I fussed around for 2 hours before I caught on to the difference.  I think I will wait til tomorrow to try and load any pictures.

My new driver updater tells me I need to upload new ones every few minutes.  It's hard to say "no" but I stopped that when I noticed a small box that said 0 new drivers required.  So many new things to learn. 

My learned Mac movements are all wrong on the PC, but it is hard to unlearn them.  I am.  I've noticed a few correct movements to different corners of the screen are becoming familiar.  And in fact, when I turned to the Mac to get some files, I went to the wrong spots already.  I had to stop and think.  I don't know how anyone uses both.  I guess that is why tech support folks hate Mac users.  They have to stop and recall all the different moves.

So I've successfully transferred some .doc files to the PC.  In small doses.  It took some time to do the first few, but more get easier.  I could probably get all of my documents transferred tomorrow, but I need to plant some seeds inside, so I may just take a break from the computer.  But I'm obsessive and may not.  Once I get a process working, it is hard to stop.

I really want to get the cat blog up and working again!