Email hell.....

[FredTransit]

I decided to only use online email after having two computers die on me in quick succession and lost a lot of emails. So I switched to using my ISP's online email, Orange. It's pants. It can be unavailable for days, and currently it's off again, I have no idea for how long. These days I can't afford to miss a single email enquiry, so it's time for a change.Now our published (website, business cards) email is redirectable. so I am not worried about having to change my email anywhere. Has anybody got any suggestions for a decent online email? I have got a yahoo account, but find it a bit domestic. Despite it's 'spammer' following I was wondering about gmail. Any comments?

[Mr Lobster]

Hotmail ? Works fine for me.

[andrew e]

Go hotmail. Googlemail shouts spammer. Conversely my expensive waitrose ISP has NEVER stuffed me.

[pogweasel]

I get email through my website(s) provider, you can use it as either webmail or as POP3/SMTP into outlook, with options to keep server copies. Nifty system, means that if the computer goes balls up I can keep going, plus have remote access. I still create back-ups on a weekly basis of everything now, so as not to lose owt, plus two of my machines have got whole-life service agreements so if the computer breaks, it gets mended (by Pillock and chums) ASAP.

[mk1_4dr]

Hotmail ? Works fine for me.

This /\ Ive had my hotmail account for years now.

[FredTransit]

I used to have a hotmail account. As for gmail, the address won't be seen until there is a reply, so I don't think it would be treated as spam. I wouldn't be publishing the email address anywhere, because of our redirectable address. Orange is with my ISP, so is my 'paid' email address, that's the irony.I don't have any back up agreement with any computer supplier, so Outlook is not an option.

[pogweasel]

TBH, 'whole' life warranty's on computers are worth the money.It's not necessarily the machine but the data on it which is the biggy, I have years and years of my work on file, and losing it would be a disaster. As the files are rarely huge, I can back those up pretty easily, but it's still handy to know that if something happens it's not all phucked. And they have quite a quick turnaround (usually 72 hours). Costs us £16 a month, which is not a huge amount and covers everything, including accidental damage (usually caused by kids / dogs). I think my crusty old Advent has been fixed up about 12 times now, and ideally needs surgery again as it's physically falling apart. Most folk would have written it off years ago, but alot of the programs I use are not Vista compatible, so keeping the XP alive is a must.Having had one epic computer fail a few years ago (when the dog ate through the cables when he was a pup), I don't want to risk it. Extended warrantys on anything else are pesh though.

[FredTransit]

Very good point about XP, but £16 a month is well on it's way to a new computer in today's market (£192 a year)

[Pillock]

I've never had an issue with gmail making me look like a spammer, out of all the email addresses I have (hotmail.co.uk, gmail, yahoo mail and my own personal domain) it's the one I prefer to give out over the phone. I guess it helps I signed up yonks ago so i actually have [email protected] instead of [email protected] or something - same as hotmail, I signed up the day they released the .co.uk ones so I got my own name there too

 

You can also set up gmail so you never ever see it's from a gmail account. It's configurable enough that you can set the From: and Reply-To: addresses to your redirectable email so people just think it's come from there.

 

Have you thought about registering your own domain? You then get a webmail app, and are in complete control over the address. You can also set up hotmail or whatever to grab mail via IMAP keeping your PC in sync with the stuff held on the server. If your computer breaks, you've still got everything online.

 

For example, I got a domain through a couple of guys at work trading as Web Toast. £20 a year plus another tenner or so depending on what address you want - i got a .net for £8/year.

I then get to use [email protected] plus can also set up [email protected] and as many other addresses as I want. You also get a fair whack of webspace for hosting pictures with enough bandwidth.

[Pillock]

In fact if you use IMAP instead of POP3 as your mail download protocol, then you don't actually remove the mail from the server.... you're just viewing a synchronised copy of it. Each time you start Outlook it downloads new mail but leaves it on the server too so you can check it with another computer elsewhere. If you read something in webmail, when you next use Outlook it'll know you've already read it and not mark it 'New' as it downloads it.If your computer then dies, you just put the same details in your new/fixed computer and bing! All your mail comes down, still correctly identified as read/unread as it was before.It also works on phones and stuff, my mobile will boing to tell me that my mail server has new mail. I can then either read it on the phone, or webmail, or outlook... it's all the same.

[Pillock]

I think my crusty old Advent has been fixed up about 12 times now, and ideally needs surgery again as it's physically falling apart.

Advents do fall apart I'm afraid to say....Drop me a PM with the faults and I'll let you know how long it'll take to fix this time

[FredTransit]

I do have my own domains, 4 in fact, it's them I am redirecting (they are web addresses as well). Interesting what you said about IMAP, I have seen that on the redirection list as an option but didn't know that' what it did so didn't select it! I like the idea of taking off the gmail from the 'from' line too.

[FredTransit]

AAAARGH! I am now being told my username and password don't match on Orange, yet I have changed nothing! This worries me, as exactly the same thing happened to me with Tiscali (for the whole internet access, not just email), yet they insisted they would look into it. I was down to going to internet shops, by the time they sorted it I was with wanadoo.

[Ratdat]

I use easily.co.uk and have done for years. You have to pay of course but it's been extremely reliable for me so far...

 

http://easily.co.uk/index.php3?exe=emailac

[dollywobbler]

I was with Orange but not now. Always found the email system clunky which is why I set up a Yahoo account.For the 2CV club, we're using Gmail accounts, which have been fine.

[Station]

I have both Hotmail and Yahoo. Hotmail for normal stuff, Yahoo for forum/work stuff.

[Pillock]

Don't trust Orange with your email. In fact don't trust them with anything. Get the hell away from them, especially if your email is your livelihood!

 

In gmail, go to settings. Select Accounts.

 

You'll see "send mail as:" at the top, and it'll have [email protected] or whatever as the one and only option. Click 'add' and you can put [email protected] in - what it'll do is send a mail to that address which you'll need to reply to, to show you own that address. Once that's set up, set it as default and your mail will always show as being from [email protected]. If whereever.com also redirects to gmail, you have a perfect system accessible from anywhere and nobody need ever know it's run through gmail.

 

IMAP is lovely, and can also be enabled on your gmail account. It just means effectively there's only one copy of your mailbox, and it's held on Google's nice reliable servers. Everything is kept in sync for you.

[FredTransit]

Yep, Orange has gone off several times this year, ranging from an hour or two to 3 days. I just had a look through the settings for gmail, and can't see any way of changing the 'from' line. I can add a reply to address, but not take off the gmail address altogether.

[Volksy]

Hotmail all the way, about the only part of Microsoft that works well!Have a yahoo account too, for stuff thats likely to generate spam - online quotes etc.

[trigger]

I've used Hotmail since i first got the internet back in 2001, only problem i had was some hacker got into my account and changed my password but luckily i emailed hotmail and they changed it all back for me quite quickly.I do get a lot of spam though.

[FredTransit]

Don't trust Orange with your email. In fact don't trust them with anything. Get the hell away from them, especially if your email is your livelihood!

 

In gmail, go to settings. Select Accounts.

 

You'll see "send mail as:" at the top, and it'll have [email protected] or whatever as the one and only option. Click 'add' and you can put [email protected] in - what it'll do is send a mail to that address which you'll need to reply to, to show you own that address. Once that's set up, set it as default and your mail will always show as being from [email protected]. If whereever.com also redirects to gmail, you have a perfect system accessible from anywhere and nobody need ever know it's run through gmail.

 

IMAP is lovely, and can also be enabled on your gmail account. It just means effectively there's only one copy of your mailbox, and it's held on Google's nice reliable servers. Everything is kept in sync for you.

Thanks have managed to do this, but can't add my old address, I get this message, which i don't understand

 

There was a problem connecting to mail.transitcenral.wanadoo.co.uk

Show error details Server returned error: "We were unable to locate the other domain. Please contact your other provider."

why can't it locate the domain, is it cos it's an old wanadoo address? Does this mean I can't ever retrieve mail from my old address?

[r.welfare]

Have you missed a "t" in "transitcentral" there Fred?

[FredTransit]

No, I either misspelt it when I took out the address or it went missing along the way! It is transitcenral, and I am glad to get rid of it!

[Pillock]

 

There was a problem connecting to mail.transitcenral.wanadoo.co.uk

Show error details Server returned error: "We were unable to locate the other domain. Please contact your other provider."

why can't it locate the domain, is it cos it's an old wanadoo address? Does this mean I can't ever retrieve mail from my old address?

It's trying to be smart and guessing the mailserver, and failing miserably. F'rexample, if you said you were [email protected] it'd go wandering off to try and find mail.bigpinkpoodle.co.uk assuming that was your mailserver.

 

I've just added another address to my gmail though and it didn't seem to get too confused.

 

Gmail, click settings at the top. Click onto the Accounts tab.

Click "Add another email address you own", and put your redirectable address in. Click "Specify a different "reply-to" address (optional)" and put the same address in.

It'll now send a mail to your redirectable mail address, which will contain a link. Copy the verification code into the next page on gmail, and then you'll be back at the Accounts page but you'll see your redirectable email listed. Click "Make default" and now every time you send a mail from gmail, it'll look like it came from your other account, and replies will be directed to that same other account (which I guess you want to point to gmail, to complete the loop).

[FredTransit]

I have programmed the redirectable to gmail already, so any test message will just go to gmail.

[FredTransit]

something very odd here. I can't send anything from orange to gmail! Yet emails sent via the redirected address come to me at gmail. Can Orange be blocking sending to gmail?

[FredTransit]

Bump! Still having to manually send the meails from Orange, it's taking me foreva!

[FredTransit]

Bump! Now can't import me address book.

[Pillock]

Just remember that to verify that you own the redirectable one, you need to reply to the email they send to it.... if you've already redirected it to gmail, then you're replying from gmail. You'll need an account that appears to be 'from' your redirectable account.TBH this is a lot of faff, why not use one of your domains as email? My domain that cost £18 a year has three different flavours of webmail, or I can use POP3/IMAP to download it. If you're seriously that worried about looking like a spammer (and I wouldn't be, gmail isn't that bad) then that's probably the way forward as you're getting yourself tied up in knots.

[FredTransit]

Even if I did use my own domain, I still couldn't import my address book, I am with 1 and 1 and as far as I know their webmail is about as fully functioned as Orange is reliable.also, I just looked it up and to use the domain's email would be £83 a year