I have read that it is very simple to reach my E-mail on the internet from most places in the world or in the US as long as I have a web address or location. But I don’t know how to go about it and need the help of those of you who do. Someone mentioned that I have to use POP. I have no idea what that is much less how to use it.
You could try using a service like Readmail or set up an account with Hotmail or any other free email service that allows you to access your other email accounts. Readmail doesn’t handle attachments or allow you to send mail, but Hotmail does.
You’re gonna need to tell us a little more. How do you get your mail now? How do you access the internet here and where you are going? Will this be on the same computer?
You’re confusing two different options. I think ;). You can either use a web mail account like Hotmail or you can set up your email client to check mail from a POP account. I’m in Australia - I have a POP3 account on a friend’s server in the US. It’s a piece of cake to set up Eudora or Pegasus to check the account and it didn’t matter what country I was in. I can check my mail on the Web as well.
If you are going overseas and taking your computer, be aware, very aware that you need a different modem for different countries. There’s apparently a modem which is supposed to be global.
And don’t forget an adaptor for the power supply of your computer. I’ve got one which fits the sockets of all countries.
I currently use my netscape browser and earthlink server on an IBM compatable computer. But I also have a yahoo address and a hotmail address.
My most used e-mail address is: radialartery@earthlink.net.
What I would like to do is ( while I am out of the country) have my family e-mail to my home computer and for me to reach my home e-mail address from Turkey, East Africa, India, Madagascar so that I can read the mail they send to me by reading their letters to my home computer. They would not send e mail to me overseas but to my home computer. I would also like to write letters to my home computer so that family at home can read my messages. Where I’m going for 6 weeks has many restricted areas where long distance phone calls can’t be easily made…like Tanzania.
I appreciate your help. Ten years at Stanford didn’t help me at all to understand physics, electronics and whatnot.
I forgot to mention that I do not have a laptop but will be using ships’ computer to e-mail and the hotel’s computer only to try and reach my home in So. Cal.
To be honest you’d be better off sticking to your Yahoo! account. Your family can attach Word documents (or whatever other type) and mail them as attachments, and you can type letters in Word and mail them back as attachments. If you want to keep copies just ask everyone to put your “home” email address in as well so you’ll have a record at home.
In the non-Web-based world, there are three important protocols involved in seending and receiving email:
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POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3). This is most likely how you access your earthlink email. A POP3 server stores incoming email and transmits it to any computer that asks (with the proper user name and password). The receiving computer gets a full copy of the message and stores it locally, then may or may not tell the server to delete its copy. Your home computer is almost certainly set to tell the server to delete its copy.
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IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) is a less-frequently used system designed for situations somewhat like yours. The IMAP server stores incoming mail and transmits it to any computer that asks (with the appropriate user name and password), but the receiving computer usually does not store a copy of the message locally; the only copy of the message lives on the IMAP server. The IMAP model is very convenient for travellers, but works best with stable connections of reasonably high bandwidth, especially when transmitting binary files.
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SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is how outgoing mail moves. You don’t need to know much about it, but you should realize that spammers just love to be able to send through somebody else’s SMTP server to preserve the spammer’s anonymity. So many ISPs have security measures on their SMTP servers such as requiring a user name and password (non-standard, but most of the major email programs support it) not allowing sending email unless you receive email first, or not allowing sending email if you are not connected to the Internet through the ISP’s network.
The conclusions that can be drawn from these limited descriptions are:
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You cannot “send e mail to … my home computer” unless you get a remote-control program that runs your home computer and makes it ask for your email. This would require a connection for the remote control program and a connection to the Internet (that is, two phone lines or equivalent).
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If your home computer gets your email, it is almost certainly not accessible anywhere but your home computer (unless you change settings or access your home computer through a remote control program).
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You can set up a remote computer to access your email and leave it on the POP3 server to be downloaded again to your home computer when you get home.
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There is a distinct possibility that you will have difficulty sending email on the road. Earthlink should be able to discuss the possibility.
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Maybe you should just stick wth your hotmail and/or yahoo web-based email for this trip.
Yeah, you can just access your Yahoo mail over the Web, using whatever web browser they have available. If you sign up for the Yahoo Delivers option (one piece of spam a week) you can also get POP access to your Yahoo mail. This way, if you leave it on Yahoo, when you get home, you can get it using Netscape’s email program, which I believe is what you’re using for Earthlink.
Another thing that needs to be cleared up: Nobody ever sends e-mail to your home computer, unless you’re a Linux nerd running your own mailserver software and you keep your computer running at all times. What people do is send e-mail to the Earthlink (in your case) server, and then the Earthlink server waits for you to come and pick it up. In general, provided that you have the right username and password, the mail server won’t care where the computer is that you’re using at the moment, and it could be halfway around the Earth.
On the other hand, if you want to use Netscape mail to access your account, and you’re going to be using public computers (and perhaps a different computer each time), you’re going to have to set up Netscape to check that account each time you check your mail (doing the same thing you did when you set it up in the first place at home), and that would quickly become annoying.
Using either of your web-based accounts (Yahoo! and Hotmail), you would just do exactly the same thing that you do to check them from home, so that’s probably easiest. Just make sure you tell everyone to use those addresses.
I appreciate the information that you all supplied. Thank you!!