How to keep your mailbox clean

Many of our clients are currently working from servers that are nearing their drive capacity. One of the things that can be done to insure that there is enough space on the server for important data is to keep your mailbox clean. Mailboxes have a tendancy to bloat up with information that we no longer need to save. Everyone knows how to hit the delete key to delete items but there are a couple of other steps that should be taken in order to reduce the bloat in your mailbox.

1. Right click on your deleted items folder and select Empty Deleted Items. This will empty out the whole folder at once.

2. Delete items from the Sent Items folder. Everything you send gets stored here. That can really add up over time. To Delete these items, click once at the top of list of emails you'd like to delete. Hold the shift key and click on the last item in the list you want to delete. Now all items between the top of your list and bottom will be highlighted. Hit the delete key and they'll all move into the deleted items folder. You know what to do from there.

3. Review the size of your folders. In Outlook click on Tools, Mailbox Cleanup. Here you'll find several buttons to click on to automatically clean up your mailbox. Clicking the Mailbox Size button will show you the size of each folder within your mailbox. If you see one that's really big you know where to go to look for stuff you don't need anymore.

In general the smaller your mailbox the fewer problems you'll have with it and the faster it will open up. You mailbox is stored as 1 database file. The bigger that file is the slower and problematic it becomes. Keeping your mailbox clean is a good habit to get into.

Amy Babinchak

Harbor Computer Services

p.s. Sorry about the size of the photos. There are some limitations to what can be posted in a blog. :-)

Vista Family Discount

For a limited time Microsoft is offering a Family discount when you upgrade your home PC's to Vista. The catch for most people is that their current home PC's aren't capable of running Vista. But if yours are, then this is a good deal.

Click here to go to the Microsoft site and find out more.

The summary is that if you have purchased from a retail store Vista Ultimate for one of your PC's at home you can order 2 additional copies of Vista Home Premium for $49 each.

The price of Vista Ultimate is about $320

You are saving about 60% on the price of each Vista Home Premium. It works out to a pretty good deal, if you're planning to upgrade your home PC's.

Vonage vs Verizon

Verizon has Vonage tied up in court for patent infringement and recently Vonage lost their case. Not only that but the court said Vonage had to stop selling its services. I recieve this update from a collegue that uses Vonage in his business. I know we have a few customers that use it as well, whether at home or at work. This post is for you.

Amy Babinchak
Harbor Computer Services

I know that a number of our members use Vonage as their main land line. It is hard to beat the features and the cost. When I signed up with Vonage, several years ago, I cut my monthly phone costs by close to two thirds and got an 800 number to boot, as well as features that are unavailable with SBC’s normal telephone service.

But in the last couple of months, there have been some disturbing news releases regarding Vonage’s law suit with Verizon. Verizon has claimed that Vonage has infringed upon their technology, and the courts seem to agree. Vonage lost its patent infringement lawsuit to Verizon in March. And the question was whether they could even provide service after some future date. Vonage was also directed for a short time to stop further account development. Like many other small business owners that rely on Vonage, in March I was wondering what my next step was.

But Vonage was able to win it’s latest battle on April 24th. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted Vonage's request for an extended stay of a lower court injunction while it appeals. See the attached articles for additional information.

HP Creates Universal Printer Driver

Hewlett Packard has announced a reversal in a previous policy statement. Previously HP had stated that they would not be producing any new print drivers for printers that were more than 3 years old. This meant that anyone wishing to print to a printer that was more than 3 years old from Vista, XP 64-bit Edition, Windows 2003 Server 64-bit edition, Terminal server, etc would have to purchase new printers.

You can hear the collective outrage now, can't you? I mean how many printers that are more than 3 years old are still in service? It was a good money making idea for HP but they lost major popularity points.

Hewlett Packard has reversed the policy by creating a Universal printer driver. There are over 70 older model printers that use this driver so far and more are expected to be added to the list as HP completes testing. This is some very good news.


Compatible operating systems
Microsoft® Windows Vista™, 2000, XP, XP Professional x641, and 2003 Server (32 bit and 64 bit), Microsoft® Windows Terminal Services. Citrix Presentation Server Environments and Novell iPrint.


Supported printers

HP LaserJet/Color LaserJet
CM1015mfp, 1150 series, 1160 series, 1200 series , 1300 series, 1320 series, 2100 series, 2200 series, 2300 series, 24x0 series, P2015 series, 2500 series, 2550 series, 2605 series, P2700 series, 3000 series, 301x series, P3005 series, 3020 series, M3027 series, 3030 series, M3035 series, 3052AiO, 3050 AiO, 3055AiO, 3200 series, 3300 series, 3300mfp, 3390 AiO, 3392 AiO, 3700 series, 3800 series, 4000 series, CP4005 series, 4050 series, 4100 series, 4100mfp, 4200 series, 4240 series, 4250 series, 4300 series, 4345 series, M4345 series, 4350 series, 4500 series, 4550 series, 4600 series, 4610 series, 4650 series, 4700 series, 4730mfp series, CM4730mfp series, 5000 series, M5025 series, M5035 series, 5100 series, 5200 series, 5500 series, 5550 series, 8000 series, CM8050 Color MFP with Edgeline Technology, CM8060 Color MFP with Edgeline Technology, 8100 series, 8150 series, 8150mfp, 9000 series, 9000mfp, 9040 series, 9050 series, 9050mfp, 9055mfp, 9065mfp, 9500 series, 9500mfp.

HP Business Inkjet/Officejet
2250 series, 2280 series, 2300 series, 2600 series, 2800 series, 3000 series, 9100 series all-in-one.

Supported by HP postscript emulation driver edition only
HP Color LaserJet 2500 and 2550 series printers, 2800 series all-in-one; HP Business Inkjet 2800 series printer