The Best Email Setup (Tips and Hints for e-mail user)

Member Name: campb3ll

Product:	Tips and Hints for e-mail user
Date:	18/07/01 (37 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Check your email anywhere, anytime

Disadvantages: None

The best setup needs up to 3 email accounts. I will explain why - if you think about it, you may agree.

People tend to access email in two ways: on the web and through an email client e.g. MS Outlook. Email is typically used for personal correspondence and for general purposes e.g. competitions, forums, mailing lists.

To start off with then you'll need two email accounts: a primary account for personal/business correspondence and a secondary account for general use as this tends to generate a high volume of mail or even spam.

Your primary account should be with a reliable service provider and should be POP or IMAP compliant for ease of portability. Your ISP will typically offer at least one POP account e.g. Lineone, Virgin. Alternatively, there are many free email providers that offer free POP or IMAP accounts e.g. MyRealBox, Mac. To avoid spam, you should only give out this address to friends or colleagues.

Your secondary email account can be either POP/IMAP or web based. You should use this address in forums, chatrooms, competitions, etc as this will invaribly result in a high volume of mail and/or spam. As you are unlikely to want to sift through this type of mail on a daily basis, I would recommend using a web based account to avoid storing a high volume of email on your own computer. Choose a web based provider with at least 3 Mb of storage and preferably with a built in spam filter e.g. AmExMail, Netaddress.

Now you have your primary and secondary email accounts, you may wonder why I recommend adding a third email account. Put simply, you will want to access your primary account from as many places as possible so you will require maximum access and portability. Some POP/IMAP providers, especially big name ISPs, include a web based service e.g. Lineone, MyRealBox. However, not all providers do this e.g. Mac. If you only want to access your mail at home/work on your own computer, then this is fine. If you also wan
t to access your email on the road or on holiday, you may have a problem. Of course, ou could simply use a web based service as your primary account but then you would always have to be online when accessing and using your account. It is far better to use a POP/IMAP service and set up a secondary account for accessing your primary account while you're away from home. (Remember to this third account to leave a copy of emails on the server!) Choose a reliable web based email provider that offers external account collection e.g. MyRealBox, AmExMail. Simply configure this third account and now you're setup for optimum email access. As a bonus, check for email providers that allow you to specify the sender's address or reply-to address e.g. Fetchmail. This will prevent any confusion when sending emails on the road i.e. you will seem to be using your primary account address.


EMAIL PROVIDERS
www.lineone.net - ISP, POP email, web access
www.virgin.net - ISP, POP email
www.myrealbox.com - IMAP email, web access, POP collection
www.apple.com - POP email
www.amexmail.com - web access, POP collection
www.netaddress.com - POP email, web access, POP collection
www.fetchmail.com - web access, POP collection

GLOSSARY
ISP - Internet Service Provider, allows access to the internet.
POP/IMAP - Allows remote collection of email from account server. IMAP additionally allows remote access to folders.
Spam - Unsolicited (typically commercial) email.

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