It’s not all jolly jolly however. Outlook hasn’t yet followed Thunderbird’s lead – each additional imap account means another sheaf of folders to watch for new mail. But the most irritating aspect of everywhere email with multiple clients is the lack of standardisation of folder names. Oh yes, there’s always an INBOX. But schizophrenia sets in around the Deleted Items folder, which likes to be Trash now and then. And that email I just dispatched – was it Sent? Or a Sent Item? I’m sure we all agree that Spam is also Junk, but at the risk of being accused of folderism, c’mon, won’t one folder do?

Having the ability to create folders that are instantly available to all my clients is great, truly. But the default four – Inbox, Sent, Trash and Junk – please let us all agree on these. I for one don’t want seven folders for each account where four will do.

In order to test the theory, I installed WICD instead, as I have in the past, and once again WICD fixed the problem. I’m not sure why the WICD team just seem to be able to get wireless to work where Network Manager boys persistently struggle, and WICD lacks the additional functionality of 3G connection management, but it just bloody works and that’s the most important feature of a connection manager.

I’ve been using WICD on and off for some time, and I’m impressed with the speed it has developed. It also looks a lot slicker than it did in the early days, something that has not gone unnoticed in the Ubuntu camp as it’s now available in the repositories. One command,

sudo apt-get install wicd

now ditches Network Manager and installs WICD. If you’re having problems with the AR5008 in Ubuntu, it’s well worth a try.