Someone tried to send me a long IM recently and it was not actually sent. He thinks that the IM service timed out.So, if you are sending a long IM, try doing this:- Go into "My Computer" or Windows Explorer. Create a temporary ----.TXT file. Click it. Type your message in the resuilting Notepad run. Dial up, log in. Go to Renderosity send-a-message. Go to the Notepad run with your message in. Drag the mouse across the message so it is all shaded. Press ctrl-C . Go back to the Renderosity send-an-IM window. Click the mouse once in its message box. Press ctrl-V .

This is good advice for writing anything long: an IM, a message post, or an e-mail. The server may hiccup after you hit send and you could lose everything that you just typed. Now, 99.99% of the time, it works fine... except for that one time when you write a 3-page response. So, save yourself: always "copy" the message before sending.

The typical problem with long messages not being sent or uploaded in either the forums or using instant messaging is that the length of time taken to write the message exceeds the length of time in which your session is valid. So, the server has to reset your session causing everything you typed to be discarded.

An faster way to get Notepad up to write and copy/paste the message is:

START > RUN > type in NOTEPAD

or have a shortcut to NotePad on the Quick Launch Bar. You could also use WRITE, which is WordPad, as it has a few more features than NotePad.

A cute thing you can do on Mac... Whenever you typed anything lengthy (that you don't want to type again if the server messes up), just before you hit "submit" select the entire text and drag it onto your desktop (it will create a simple clip file). If anything went wrong, re-open the web page, drag the clip file into the text box and... that's it! :-)