I have what may seem to be an utterly ridonkulous question. A client wants to market to companies who hire firmware engineers, hardware engineers, Java developers, mechanical designers and Microsoft developers, and he's asked me to tell him what companies would hire those people.

I can't think of anything specific, other than companies that use the web and/or a network to sell a product or software(s), provide service for their product or software, or otherwise offer some sort of information based service.

Is that a crazy definition? Off the top of your head, does anyone have any examples of companies who might hire for those jobs?

Is there any way to hunt down all the related registry keys for that particular piece of software, and transfer them over to the new hard disk like it's a real install?

You can use the search function in regedit to find the relevant keys in the registry, and then export them. Search by the software company's name and by the software's name. Before you try reinstalling the keys, though, copy over the entire directory containing the program, and just try running the executable first. Sometimes that'll work.

Before you try reinstalling the keys, though, copy over the entire directory containing the program, and just try running the executable first. Sometimes that'll work.

Yeah, I'm hoping this works too, but it's good to know I probably can hunt down all necessary registry keys if I need to.

Then I'll get the fun of tinkering with the registry, which everybody knows is easy as pie and can't possibly do bad things to your computer.

Just remember to export a copy of your entire registry to use as a backup before you start tinkering with it. That way, you've got a pretty good chance of restoring things if you manage to hose something.

Since you're planning on doing a brand new XP install on the new hard drive anyway, I would recommend trying to get this particular program to work first. That way, if things do go unfixably kaplooey, you only lost the time it took to install XP.

Just remember to export a copy of your entire registry to use as a backup before you start tinkering with it.

Yeah. I was teasing about the "nothing bad can happen while tinkering with the registry, right?"

Since you're planning on doing a brand new XP install on the new hard drive anyway, I would recommend trying to get this particular program to work first. That way, if things do go unfixably kaplooey, you only lost the time it took to install XP.

I already did the XP install. That was a couple of days ago.

This is only somewhat related, but if you're setting up a virtual XP machine on a Windows, Mac or Linux machine using Parallels, on the host machine the virtual machine is just a single file. So if you make backups of that file, you could try multiple different things on the virtual machine and if they don't work out or if you hose the machine, you can just delete the file and use one of your backups.

I've been using the mail client that came with OS X. So far, it's pretty good--I only have two gripes. Firstly, it doesn't let me remove messages from the server on a message by message basis (it has to be set for the whole account and happens when mail is checked). More importantly, though, is that the signature function is a bit jacked. I have signatures set up for just one of my accounts, but it insists on putting signatures on all my emails--annoying enough, but the Signature field in the header is set to none and it still does it! Reselecting none (it's the only option) makes it disappear, but I don't always remember to do that.

What other good mail clients are there for OS X?

I use gmail by preference and Notes when forced to by work, but I know a lot of people (all platforms) love Thunderbird.

I use gmail as a repository, but the default client is currently handling 5 POP accounts and one IMAP one, so I think I need a thick client.

Off to look at Thunderbird.

Part of me thinks I should get off of Eudora on the PC, despite having used it for...shit, a fuck of a long time, or perhaps because I've been using it that long.

ita, I just recently switched to Thunderbird from using Eudora for yonks, and I mostly like it. A few tiny annoyances, but overall it's good. I'm not using it as heftily as you are, though.