Get All Your E-Mail in One Fell Swoop
Scott Spanbauer
Let's face it: E-mail is the number one use for a personal computer. Lots of us spend hours each day dealing with the dozens, even hundreds, of messages we receive. What makes it worse is that messages arrive through multiple accounts. If you're like me, you have an e-mail address for work, another for your home PC, one or more free Web-based e-mail accounts, an America Online e-mail address, and perhaps others.
Wouldn't it be great if you could grab all that mail with the click of a single button? Actually, you can. Most e-mail programs support multiple e-mail accounts and let you send and receive from them individually, or all at once. And more and more e-mail services support the standard POP3, SMTP, and IMAP mail transport protocols that let your e-mail program communicate with mail servers.
POP3 is the lingua franca of incoming e-mail. Regardless of the major e-mail program you use, you can almost always add another POP3 account in a jiffy. All you need to know is the POP3 server domain name or IP address of your ISP or e-mail service; your log-in name; and your password. The server's address is frequently something similar to "mail. ispname.com" or "pop. ispname.com," in which ispname is the service's domain name.
Outgoing mail is sent to an SMTP server (for example, "smtp. ispname.com"), usually located at the same address as the incoming mail server. IMAP mail servers work about the same--you need to know the mail server's address, your log-in name, and your password, as well as the information described above for the outgoing SMTP server.
To add a mail account to Outlook 2002 (the version that comes with Office XP), choose Tools, E-mail Accounts, select Add a new e-mail account, click Next, select the type of e-mail server, and click Next again (see FIGURE 1). Fill in the user and server information and click Next to finish.
In Outlook Express 6, choose Tools, Accounts, click Add, Mail, and enter the user and server information in the wizard that pops up. In Netscape Mail 6.2, choose Edit, Mail & Newsgroup Account Settings, then click the New Account button and answer the queries of the resulting wizard. In Eudora 5.1, choose Tools, Personalities, right-click the Personalities window at the left side of the screen, choose New, and then fill in the account information in the subsequent wizard screens.
There's Always a Catch
Now that I've explained the basics, here's the rub: You may not be able to get all your e-mail accounts funneled nicely into one e-mail program, and in one case, you'll have to agree to receive spam.
When AOL purchased Netscape, Netscape Mail suddenly learned how to send and receive AOL mail. If you followed the instructions above to configure Netscape Mail 6.2 to check your AOL account, you may have noticed that the server address is imap.mail.aol.com. Don't bother trying to plug that address into Outlook Express or Eudora--it won't work.
AOL's servers don't comply with the IMAP standard, and Netscape Mail is the only e-mail program (other than AOL's own software) that knows how to talk to those servers. If you're determined to get AOL mail in Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, or an older version of Netscape Communicator, check out ENetBot's $20 ENetBot Mail agent (see FIGURE 2).
Similarly, Microsoft Passport's Hotmail service seems to work only with that company's own e-mail programs. If you want to send and receive Hotmail messages using Eudora or Netscape Mail, you'll need another $20 add-on mail agent called Pop3Hot. Visit our Downloads library to download 30-day demo versions of both ENetBot Mail and Pop3Hot.
Yahoo Mail lets you send and receive mail using its standard POP3 and SMTP servers (pop.mail.yahoo.com and smtp.mail.yahoo.com, respectively), but it won't work until you sign up for the Yahoo Delivers targeted-marketing (spam) service. To enable the "service," click the Options link after logging in to Yahoo Mail, and then choose the link labeled POP Access & Forwarding.
Send your questions and tips to nettips@spanbauer.com. We pay $50 for published items. Scott Spanbauer is a contributing editor for PC World.
Registrar Alternatives
Imagine my delight when VeriSign (formerly Network Solutions) recently sent me a friendly note offering to renew my domain name (spanbauer.com, natch) for a mere $63 for two years (that's $31.50 per year for the math-challenged)--a whopping discount of 10 percent!
I'm being sarcastic, of course. I've never been fond of VeriSign's pushy marketing, not to mention its high prices. But its latest message sent me over the edge. The note's ominous warnings ("Your Web address is about to expire!") had me going for a moment--hadn't I renewed my domain last year? A quick check at the VeriSign site confirmed that more than a year remained before I needed to renew. VeriSign, you just lost a customer.
When it is time to renew, I'll transfer my domain name to one of the many alternative, low-cost registrars. Many offer domain registration for as little as $10 per year. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers--in charge of who gets to create and hand out domain names such as microsoft.com, netscape.net, and nra.org--maintains a detailed list of accredited registrars.
Whichever registrar you choose should appear on the ICANN list. But you'll probably need some help finding the right registrar for you. Another useful resource is DomainNameBuyersGuide.com, an independent, consumer-oriented registrar review site that tells you who's good and who's not so good, as well as how much the various services charge for domain-name registration. Each registrar's policies, pricing, and consumer track record are described, and you get an indication of how easy it will be to manage your domain account online. You can also find out whether the service gives you outright ownership of your domain (VeriSign doesn't), and whether it restricts you from transferring your domain freely to another registrar.
Based on DomainNameBuyersGuide.com's recommendations, I'm probably going to switch to one of the little-known but highly rated registrars, which include Domaindiscover.com, Domaininfo.com, and Gandi.net (one of the least-expensive registration services at only 12 euros per year). Before you choose a registrar, be sure to read DomainNameBuyersGuide.com's Domain Name Buying Tips.
A Favorites Home Page
Reader Ricci Neer found a tip in a PCWorld.com archive on displaying your Navigator bookmarks as your home page. (In Netscape 6.2, choose Edit, Preferences, and then select Navigator in the category list. In the Home Page section, make sure the location shows the path to your bookmark.htm file. You can find the latter by using Windows' Find or Search tool.)
The tip stated that you can't do the same thing in Internet Explorer 4. Not so, says Neer. Choose Tools, Internet Options, click the General tab, and make sure that your Home Page or Start Page address points to the Favorites folder, using the standard URL for local files: 'file:///C:/ foldername/foldername', where foldername/foldername is the path to your Favorites folder. Note that there are three forward slashes after file:. On Neer's computer, the proper URL is file:///C:/Windows/Favorites.
Download of the Month: Revision Control
That software you're using isn't getting any younger. Here are the latest updates to two key Internet tools. Go to our Downloads library to find them.
QuickTime 5.0.2; 8.3 MB. Not just for Macintosh users anymore, the newest edition of QuickTime--whose look you can customize with skins--plays a broad range of media types, including MP3 and.wav audio files. This version of the program also brings Apple's 360-degree QuickTime VR virtual-reality spec to the PC.
ZoneAlarm 2.6.231; 2.8MB. The latest version of the premier free firewall smooths minor glitches present in the initial release of version 2.6 (2.6.088), including intermittent problems running under Windows Me.
Get Rid of X10, Again
The October 2001 Internet Tips explained at great length how to disable pop-up browser windows, including the ubiquitous X10 wireless camera ad, by messing with browser settings and downloading software that suppresses the unwanted windows. But if you'd prefer to exterminate only the X10 pop-under campaign, bookmark this page. As long as cookies are still enabled on your browser, you'll be X10-free for a month.