Why can't my parents access AOL mail from WebTV?

General Questions
#1

I’m on my computer at work. I go to http://www.aol.com. I see “AOL Anywhere” and fields where I can enter an AOL screen name and password in order to check my e-mail via any web browser.

Yet when my parents visit friends in Florida, they don’t get that page on their friends’ WebTV browser. What the hell? Is this just a brutal competitive strategy by WebTV? Or am I missing something?

#2

AOLAnywhere, AFAIK, requires you to download a java applet, which WebTV is incapable of doing.

In short, AOL sucks for making you download an applet, and WebTV sucks for not letting you download this applet.

#3

Ah. And WebTV is incapable of using Java. Excellent. (Answer, that is–very NOT excellent situation.)

thanks.

#4

Yeah, cause SUN owns Java & they are suing Microsoft, who owns webtv. Or the other way around :-)…

#5

Not really. MS has Java support in it’s IE browser.

MS didn’t make the decision to leave Java support out of WebTV. It wasn’t there when they bought it, and MS simply didn’t add it.

It’s just the nature of the beast. It has no local storage, so Java just isn’t feasable. It could be done, but it would add a good deal of cost for relatively little gain.

That, and MS doesn’t care.

#6

Flymaster, I was on webtv & I went to microsoft.com & they said the reason webtv doesn’t do java is because of pending litigation with Sun. But that they would add Java to webtv later. You can’t use IE with webtv.

I suppose one could type in ‘AOL email with webtv’ in a search box & find out how it works to get email that way.

#7

I am a proud and happy WebTV user. I love my computer, but for the bulk of my internet use (Email, Message Boards - This One and http://www.mikeportnoy.com, and Buying stuff - Usually CDNOW) webtv is great and I prefer my sofa to my chair and I also prefer my 37 inch TV to my 17’ monitor.

Since the Summer 99 webtv update, you can access any mail account, assuming it supports POP3 which I assume AOL does. Just access the “Remote Mail” section of your webtv email screen, and upon entering you user name and your POP3 password (that you have set up with your AOL account beforehand) and you can access your AOL mailbox. Same goes for the other way around (Viewing WebTV mail from a PC)

Also any third party mail system (I use Yahoo) can access any POP3 mail account. I access my webtv mail from anywhere even a library if I just goto Ymy yahoo account and click “view other mail”.

WebTV has a bad rap sometimes, I love it!