Review-Otherinbox.com Email Organizer
An article over at TechCrunch led me to the beta email service called Otherinbox . I had been battling the email monster for years, and no matter how hard I tried the monster just continued to get bigger. I tried setting up automatic filters, using folders, using separate email accounts and to no avail hadn’t been able to effectively manage my email.
Currently all of my various email accounts forwarded to my one gmail account, so I am in touch with all accounts at one time. The advantage to this is that I have the ability to see all of my email in one place. The disadvantage is that it becomes somewhat cumbersome to manage. That’s why when I read about Otherinbox I decided to give it a try.
After using Otherinbox for a little while, I think it depends on what you’re looking for that will determine whether or not its for you.
Otherinbox Advantages
Let me tell you what I do like about it. I like the fact that you can create emails on the fly. Meaning that if I am signing up for something I can quickly create a prefix, add it on to my email addy and voila! Once the email hits Otherinbox it automatically creates a folder. So I see all of my emails in one spot and in folders.
That I do like.
Otherinbox works like this, on initial signup, you are required to give a name that will be your main email address. Choose this name wisely. Let’s pretend I used the name flashbulb. If I visited Jane Doe’s website and wanted to sign up for her offer, I could create a on the fly disposable email address named JaneDoe@flashbulb.otherinbox.com.
The problem I found is that after I did that about 20 times at different websites, I had that many folders in my account.
So I decided the next best thing would be to create category names such as cars or ebooks and use these instead. This creates higher level grouping vs a separate email address for every sign up. The disadvantage to this method is that if you start getting spam and want to delete that email address, you will delete all of your subscriptions to that email address.
Otherinbox Disadvantages
What I don’t like is that the reading screen is too small. It’s like reading in frames with the a window pane on top displaying the messages, and then the actual message below in a second pane. My gosh is that pane small and the little bit of resizing available doesn’t help much. I would say its equivalent to reading your email on cell phone…well maybe not that bad but close to it.
Despite these shortcomings I will stick with it, because I find that I can manage my email better. Note that I still use my main email account quite frequently and use Otherinbox to manage email that I don’t have to check on a regular basis.
Review: Ashampoo Uninstaller 3 Takes A Little Time But Does The Job
Ashampoo Uninstaller 3 is a program that tracks all the files that are loaded on your computer when you install a program. By default, much of the software you have will already contain the program to uninstall the software if you decide you don’t want it anymore. Even windows has an uninstaller program you can use. It is found under Control Panel, and then “Add Remove Programs”.
So if these programs already have uninstallers included with them, why am I talking about Ashampoo Uninstaller 3? Well, that’s because the uninstaller programs included with software and that comes standard in windows does not do a good job of uninstalling a program.
So what does that mean?
It means that when software is installed it puts little fragments all over your computer and when uninstalled it doesn’t find all those fragments. Over time this litters your system by leaving trash all over your PC, which in turn slows it down. Can you imagine throwing little bits of paper all over your carpet in a room and only vacuuming the areas that are heavily traveled?
Sooner or later the build up will affect your ability to walk through the room or do anything productive in that room. Well the same thing with your PC. I have first hand experience with this and the result was I had to do a clean install of my entire system. What a bummer and a task I would rather have avoided.
I had to reformat my hard drive, load the O/S, drivers, software, etc., and while I was at it I took the opportunity to clean out my tower using compressed air. I could have paid the local computer repair shop $100 to do it and saved myself about 4 hours of my life I will never get back. But I would have still had to bring it back home and load all of my personal software. Over the last 2 decades I have learned to do a lot for myself to save a few bucks for when and if I really need to hire a pro.
Okay back to Ashampoo Uninstaller 3.
It was recommended to me by some friends of mine so I decided to give it whiz. There is a free 30 day trial so I figured I didn’t have anything to loose. Plus, I had just did a clean reinstall and this was the perfect time to put this on my PC. Installation was a breeze.
It is supposed to detect the installation of new software and take a picture of your system before and after installation. That way if you uninstall a program, it knows how to restore the exact condition of your system prior to the installation of that program. yippee!
But….
Once the detection occurred, Ashampoo took a snapshot of the before picture of my system, and that took quite a while….like a couple of minutes. Then the installation of the program I was installing popped up so I ran that as I normally would. (Note***Ashampoo recommends to start any new program installed before going to the next step. A lot of programs do not finish the installation until the program is actually ran for the first time)
Then here comes the after picture Ashampoo takes…that took an awfully long time too. That is the one downfall of this program. It takes a long time to install new software…much longer time that what I am used to.
But you have to look at the big picture because a little time spent monitoring every detail will keep your system in shape and help prevent the slow down of performance on your PC. Other than this the program works great. I have tested the uninstall and reinstall of some programs and it worked like a charm.
It has some other maintenance tools included like hard drive defragment, registry cleaner and the ability to manage your system restore points. I have other software that I use for maintenance, besides I only bought Ashampoo to be an uninstaller and not all that other stuff. But if you don’t already have those tools, it really can’t hurt to use what they’ve included in their program.
