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September 15, 2006
Sending and Receiving E-mail on the Road
Dear Larry,
I read with interest your column on sending e-mail while on
the road. But I still don’t get it. Why can I receive my Optimum Online e-mail
while I’m traveling yet still have trouble sending?
D. D.
Dear D. D.,
Once upon a time, there were two neighboring countries, the
Blue country and the Green country. Each country had an official postmaster who
was responsible for handling that country’s mail. If Jane lived in the Blue
country, the Blue postmaster would be responsible for delivering all of her
incoming mail to her. And if Jane wanted to send some outgoing mail, the Blue
postmaster would also pick it up and send it on her behalf.
Jane decided to take a trip and travel in the Green country. Her inbound mail
wouldn’t be a problem because the Blue postmaster would see to it that it made
its way to Jane wherever she happened to be. But when Jane wanted to send a
piece of outgoing mail, she’d have a problem. Since she wasn’t a citizen of the
Green country, the Green postmaster would be unwilling to deliver her outbound
mail—it was hard enough for the Green mailman to attend to his own citizens let
alone help out visitors from another land.
Your predicament, D. D., is somewhat similar. Your e-mailbox
resides with Optimum Online, and they will deliver your inbound mail to your
computer wherever it happens to be—as long as it’s connected to the Internet.
Also, when you’re at home and connected to the Optimum Online Internet service
that you’re paying for, Optimum Online happily attends to your outgoing mail as
well.
When you’re traveling, however, that’s another story. Let’s
say you and your laptop are visiting someone in the New York City area and are
now connected to Time Warner Cable. Your computer, on the other hand, is still
programmed to send mail via your home Internet provider, Optimum Online. When
you try to send outgoing mail while connected to another service, Optimum Online
will refuse to accept it because it can detect that you’re not directly
connected to their service.
The reason this doesn’t work is not because of a cost factor,
it’s because of the potential for rampant spam. If any or all Internet providers
were willing to send just anybody’s mail, then spammers (businesses who mail out
unsolicited junk to millions and millions of addresses) would have free reign,
and the providers would soon become overloaded with junk mail. (That’s why
travelers didn’t have this problem as early as six or seven years ago when spam
wasn’t such a huge issue.)
You have three choices available to you when it comes to
sending e-mail on the road:
(A) If your mailbox happens to reside with a company who will
only send your outbound mail if you provide a valid user name and password, then
you won’t have a problem sending mail wherever you happen to be—as long as your
computer is programmed to provide that username and password.
(B) If you change your computer’s outgoing mail settings to
those of the service you’re connected to, you’ll be able to send mail. In the
Optimum Online example above, you’d have to change your outgoing mail settings
to Time Warner Cable when you were visiting and connected to their service in
the New York City area. When you’re on an extended stay somewhere, this may not
be a big deal; but when you’re in a hotel room for only a day or two, figuring
out the correct settings and programming them into your laptop may be
impractical.
(C) Use a free web-based mail service to send mail when you’re
on the road. A good generic choice would be
www.mail2web.com. Here’s how to use it:
1. If you use Outlook Express to send and receive mail, click
Tools, Accounts, Properties, Servers. (Outlook users can find their settings in
much the same way.)
2. Take note of your Incoming (POP3) Server Name and your Account Name.
3. Go to www.mail2web.com and click
Advanced Login.
4. Enter your Incoming Server name in the Server Name box.
5. Enter your Account Name in the User ID box.
6. Enter your e-mail password in the Password box.
7. Click Check Mail.
8. Once you’re connected, click a Subject line to read one of your messages on
your mail server or click New Message to compose and send a new mail message.
9. When finished, click Logoff.
This isn’t a perfect solution, but at least you’ll be able to
get your outbound mail on its way when you’re on the road.
This is Larry Schneider, logging off.
