Chris Allen chris@cjx.com writes:

Browsing the web: Netscape - Soooo slow..

Netscape is OK unless you have tables in tables in tables... etc. Mozilla seems to be better, but still not quite ready for prime-time.

Email: Sylpheed is the only program I have found that comes close to Eudora

[...]

Usenet news: PAN - not as polished as Agent but no real complaints here

I'm using XEmacs/Gnus with the gnus-agent feature to read both my email and news. I do the same on both my home and office machines (although the office one isn't agentised, as it's on a permanent connection), with roles, filtering, adaptive scoring, virtual groups, etc, and it just leaves anything else trailing in the dust. The price you pay for that is extensive configuration is needed to make the extensive configurability work for you. (However, I am a lisp/scheme fan, so it's not bad for me.)

Office Apps: Star Office? - So slow even on a 500Mhz PIII that it makes windows look fast.

StarOffice is memory-hungry, I believe. I use the Gnome Office combination of AbiWord (still beta, but 90% there now) for quick letters and Gnumeric for spreadsheets, but I'm not that intensive a user of either (as my papers are in LaTeX and number crunching in R or XLisp).

What do you all use for your main desktop machine? And are you productive with it?

As you can guess for the above, both of my desktop machines run Linux and I'm fairly productive with it. (cue sarky comments from others)

[...] less productive on a Linux desktop machine because I am for ever hacking, updating and fixing things instead of getting on with my work!

Oh yes, you have to get something that works, set it up right and then try to leave it alone rather than "improve" forever, as you can with Linux. With closed OSes (eg MacOS that we have at work), you don't have the option of doing that.

p.s. Anyone else from around Leiston here?

I had to look it up on the map...