1 September 2003

Adventures with E-Mail

Not too long ago I stopped being a customer of Shaw Cable internet and switched over to AOL. Now why on Earth would I want to do a thing like that, you ask? Simple: money was somewhat short at the time and AOL was willing to give me three months for free, and they’ll take the money right out of my bank account. All I had to do was go out and spend $20 on a modem.

Back when I was with Shaw my E-Mail client of choice was Microsoft Outlook, for two very good reasons: First, Outlook has a very good system for sorting through incoming mail and sending it to different places for you to take action on it. At the time this proved invaluable given the sheer amount of spam E-Mail I was getting. The second reason was one of storage. With Outlook I can store all of my E-Mail messages, the ones I have any interest in keeping that is, in a single Personal Folders file, which I can access with any version of Outlook or Microsoft Exchange. Should I decide to revert back to Outlook Express I can easily import my archives to that file format. As an alternative, most E-Mail programs out there, the ones worth their salt anyway, will allow you to import messages from an Outlook Personal Folders File, which gives me a lot of choices should I decide to switch.

In other words, I was using it for convenience, and when it comes to convenience Outlook is the King of the Hill.

The problem is, though, when I started using AOL I was no longer able to use Outlook as my E-Mail client of choice. As soon as I switched over I was pretty much tied to the E-Mail client built into AOL. I went looking through their web sites to see if I could find anyway around this, but if there is then it sure as hell isn’t published anywhere that I can find. This is more annoying than debilitating, for the AOL client, while very simplistic, actually does a pretty damn good job of handling E-Mails. And I’ve noticed I get a lot less spam through that account than I have through a number of others.

Of course, if you are an AOL customer and you have any intention of hanging onto your correspondence, then it is absolutely essential that you make use of the Filing Cabinet built into the AOL software. The filing cabinet acts a lot like an Outlook Personal Folders File, one of the key differences being that I can’t import from it to other programs. I have AOL configured to automatically place any message that I send or receive in my filing cabinet, so that means I don’t have to spend a lot of time going through messages to make sure I kept a copy of it

Recently while I was on line I saw an ad for a program from AOL called AOL Communicator. What this is, it’s an E-Mail client specifically written for AOL customers, but it also allows you to access third party POP3 or IMAP E-Mail accounts so that you can handle all of your E-Mail from the same program. Very convenient, and it even allows you to import your mail archives from Outlook and Outlook Express. However I have yet to find any really reliable means of backing up that information once it’s been imported. Of course, in all honesty, I haven’t really had time to go looking all that hard, but it’s still a thought. And it’s on my list, really it is.

While I was fooling around with things I had cause to install a copy of Netscape 6.2 that I’ve had kicking around for a while. My main reason for installing Netscape was the built in Java support. In order to add Java to my installation of Internet Explorer I have to take a trip to a page on Microsoft’s site which then proceeds to tell me that I don’t have a version of Java installed on my system that the page supports and directs me to the Windows Update site. So I go to Windows Update, and Windows Update wants me to download and install so many updates that my computer will be down for days. No thank you.

So I installed Netscape, and while I was at it I noticed something. The Netscape Mail client claims to understand the AOL E-Mail service. I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised, really. The AOL service uses a technology called Screen Name to authenticate its customers and the Netscape Web Mail service uses the same technology. All right, then, time to experiment.

The first thing I did was pay a visit to Netscape Web Mail and set up an account under my existing screen name. So I now have two INSSNemesis E-Mail accounts, one at aol.com and one at netscape.net. Then I went into the Netscape Mail client and fed it the information is asked of me for both accounts. That having been done I connected to the Internet and attempted to send and receive mail through Netscape Mail.

In all fairness I would imagine that it probably does work. It simply did not want to work for me. No how, no way was Netscape Mail going to retrieve mail from those two accounts. Now I could understand it balking at the AOL account, but the Netscape one? That didn’t make any sense to me.

So I downloaded and installed Netscape 7.1, the newest version. Set up the mail accounts exactly the way I did before, and attempted to check mail. No joy.

I’ve been fooling around with it for the last few days now, and I think I’m finally beginning to understand what’s going on.

I think that the reason why Netscape Mail is balking at retrieving mail from those two accounts is that they’re both Screen Name service accounts, and I’m currently logged onto the Screen Name service. I am willing to bet vital parts of someone else’s anatomy that if I were to install Netscape on another system with another ISP and feed it that account information and turn it loose, it would retrieve mail from those accounts. Until that happens, though, I’m not going to have that convenience available to me.

Oh, well, you win some you lose some.

The good news is that all this little experiment cost me was a little bit of time. Not that much, really, considering I decided to take a break from fiction for a couple of days. Those marathon sessions on Remote Control and Moonshadow kind of fictioned me out and I can use the time to recharge my creative batteries.

By the way, if you have Outlook 2002 and you have an E-Mail account through Hotmail or MSN, Outlook will send and receive your mail from that account. According to the documentation it was also support other HTML mail services, but you have to provide the URL for the server.

I’ve been trying this out for a while and it works pretty damn well. With high speed internet access, like Cable or DSL, it’s almost lightning quick. With dial up it’s about three times slower, but the good news is that it doesn’t feel like you’re waiting a terribly lone time.

Which reminds me, with any luck I will be using the AOL broadband Internet service by next week. I’ll make sure to write about my experiences setting that up when it comes.

Anyway, a nap, and then some time on plotlines …