2 Annoyances

[John Moore 3rd]

I am enthralled with Pidgin but am annoyed by 2 things that seem to
happen far too often.  One minor & one major.

Pidgin 2.5.3
O/S:  XP SP3

Minor Annoyance:  Initial Start-Up

When starting Pidgin it takes too much time.  The view from Task Manager
indicates that Pidgin goes through several 'Responding' & 'Not
Responding' phases. :(  Usually patience will prevail and ultimately
Pidgin boots.  From My personal logs I noticed this behavior /after/
installing the Skype Plug-In.  I can ameliorate this Start-Up hassle if
I remember to Open Skype _before_ Opening Pidgin.    Because I use both
Google Talk with My Gmail Account & with a Google Apps Domain I have
resigned Myself to the 'Certificate Acceptance' confusion.  :-\

Major Annoyance:  accounts.xml suffers a lobotomy several times a year.  :(

I have not been able to track the source of this intensely aggravating
circumstance but every 2-3 months I Open Pidgin and am greeted with the
'Welcome to Pidgin' screen inviting Me to configure Accounts.  Arrugh!!!
 Everything was configured and running smoothly the night before when I
closed Pidgin normally.  No Warning, just all the data in accounts.xml
has vanished.  :-\  The most irritating aspect of this is that even when
all 8 Accounts have been re-enter manually the settings related to
combining Buddies  using 'Expand' is lost too.  Also lost are the
assigned aliases which is a large hassle when ICQ Contacts are suddenly
represented by their ICQ # and not their Name.  The other thing that
must be reconfigured are the IRC Channels that were configured to
'Auto-Join'.

I know this can be 'solved' by remembering to manually maintain a Copy
of accounts.xml in another location on the computer; but invariably when
this error happens it isn't with a recent back-up available.  Has anyone
ascertained what causes this data loss?

Other than the above 2 items I have Zero complaints with Pidgin.  The
Application is extremely versatile, stable and customizable.  The
Support ranks among the very best I have experienced with any
Application.  Any suggestions to mitigate the 2 annoyances above will be
much appreciated.

JOHN 8-)
Timestamp: Sunday 04 Jan 2009, 13:46  --500 (Eastern Standard Time)

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