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Take your email on holiday

Thanks to Microsoft Communique www.cmq.com.au - Sept 2001

What kind of a vacation is it anyway if you can't check your email once you've escaped? The most likely solution when you leave home base is to use Hotmail, the Web-based email service - but there is another option. This article by Peter Ching shows how to access your usual everyday email account from a distance.

"Why would I need anything more than a Hotmail account?" doubters among you might be thinking. Well, for a start, you can have at your fingertips (with the aid of a floppy disk) your email address book and perhaps a few relevant messages you can refer to in order to carry on with a conversation or negotiation currently in progress.

What you'll need is access to somebody else's Internet-enabled computer and a few essential bits of information from your own computer.

What's my name again?

If you've been using the Internet for some time, you may already be familiar with some of the esoterica involved in configuring your email program. That's the information you'll be needing. To be precise, you will need to write down and take with you the following:

your email address
your user name (most of the time this is the first part of your email address. For example, if your email address is 'tarzan@apeman.com', then the odds are pretty good that your user name is 'tarzan')
your password (in the wonderful world of email, this is the PIN, so you'd better be on familiar terms with it if you plan to continue emailing) and
your POP server (without which you'd receive no email. Your POP Server holds all your email and is located with your ISP).

Okay, now you can go on vacation. However, if you think you'll be needing your email address book and relevant messages from conversations in progress, you'll need to do a bit more work.

If you know that you'll have access to a computer with the same email program you regularly use, you can save the address book and messages to a floppy disk. When you place it in the floppy drive of the next computer, the information can be readily referenced.

If you have no idea what the computer set-up you'll be coming across, you can always save the messages as text files. You'll be able to read those files using a wide variety of programs, including most email programs themselves.

Any email addresses you'll be needing when you're away are probably better committed to paper rather than guessing whether you'll be able to import your whole address book into a foreign email program.

Where will you find a computer you can use to check your email? Hotels sometimes provide them. Other likely places include public libraries, Internet cafes, friends' homes and office services oulets.

Making it work for you

The email settings listed in the bold type above need to be entered before you can make the borrowed email program your slave. Poke around the program's menus. What you'll be looking for is an item named Accounts, Settings, or Preferences.

Once you've located and summoned the relevant windows or dialog boxes, it will become pretty obvious what information goes where.

You may see a line in the configuration panels asking for the SMTP server. You won't need to touch this setting if you don't intend to send email. The SMTP server is used only to send emails.

If you do intend to send email from this computer, the SMTP server to use is the one already configured there. The SMTP server you use from home cannot be used.

A word of warning!

If you are using a friend's computer, take note of their existing settings before replacing them with your settings. Re-enter the information exactly as it was before you fiddled. Blood will be spilled if you ignorantly consign your friend to email Cyberia. ©