And so the migration begins.

There were a small pile of boxes waiting for me when I got in this afternoon (taking my mother to the hospital this morning for a visit to Cardiology: 2 hours for a 10min interview with a specialist, but at least they considered her well enough to come back in 12 months).

It is very disconcerting to spend a couple of hundred quid & receive a small empty box. Medialess software is horrid, even if it's less wastefull, because you never feel like you have anything for your money, and it's all far too subject to the whims and success or failure of the vendor. Even worse, with Microsoft Office and many others there is no chance to download and burn a disc, since you download an installer that then installs direct.

And it's slow, subject to the slings and arrows of connection speed. Nasty.

Software vendors - if you're reading this, if you sell software as download only and a competitor has an equivalent product with physical media, I shall always choose the physical media option. Download & direct install only = no sale, as far as I can manage it. King Cnut? Sure (and that's not an anagram:-( )

So I've exported all my emails to an entourage archive file and now am transferring across all my data to the FAT disc partition on my backup drive ready to upload to the new machine. I wonder if Outlook will import Entourage mails?

*edit*
I am naive in my old age. Of course outlook won't import files from an Apple computer, even one running microsoft software. Suggestions on the internet instruct that one can drag emails into suitably named folders on the desktop, however there is a limit of 200 mails per drag & drop, and I have >20,000 emails (and that's with regular culling of junk)

Apple's Mail program will however import entourage emails, and while reluctant, will export them in mbox format, albeit slowly. I can hear the fans spinning up now as it labours with the conversion. From there I may be able to use a 'free' program to do the conversion, or may have to import into Thunderbird and then convert. I did find one converter that would charge me $30 and claimed to do the job OK, but that seems a bit steep for a one-off conversion (even if my time is worth more than that) so it will remain a last resort.

I won't say 'never again' but it's not terribly likely I'll go back to a Mac. Maybe. ;-)