It wasn’t that long ago that Pocketmail was our only option for email that we could use as we traveled. Now, with Internet connections available almost everywhere we go, email should work just like at home, right? Well … almost.
A friend of mine recently took a short trip from his home in Florida to North Carolina and he took his laptop computer (with WiFi) with him, but he said he couldn’t get his email because that always comes into Outlook on his desktop computer at home. I taught him how he can check his email from anywhere, and the same technique should apply to you as well.
His email is @bellsouth.net. So, all he needs to do is go to www.bellsouth.net – in your case it may be www.telus.net, www.comcast.net, or whatever the website is for your provider – and find the link to log in. On Bellsouth.net there is a spot in the upper right that says, “Sign In”. It doesn’t mention email because that is just one of the services provided for customers. Once you sign in with your account’s username and password, you will see a link to check your email. Other providers’ websites specifically link to ‘Webmail’ or ‘Check your Email’.
The point is, as long as you know your username (same as your email) and password, most providers give you a way to see your email thru their website. You don’t have to have Outlook, or any other email client, set up. You don’t have to have a specific webmail account like Yahoo! or Gmail or Hotmail, you can check your regular email on your provider’s website. If you don’t know your email provider’s website, or it’s not working right, you can try www.mail2web.com. It’s quite amazing. You don’t even need to be registered with them. Just enter your email address and password, and it will go retrieve your mail! It can even get your email on corporate accounts.
Once you know how to check your email from your provider’s website, you can make a shortcut to that on your desktop, or put it in your favorites. There’s a video on my website that teaches how to make a shortcut. It’s on the ‘Essential Skills‘ page, then click on ‘shortcuts.’
If you are going to be traveling for extended periods, you may be canceling your service from Bellsouth, or Comcast, or whatever you use at home. Then, having a gmail account is a great idea. We like gmail a lot! We have a tutorial video on our website about how to sign up for a Gmail account. Just go to ‘More’ videos, and click on ‘Get a Gmail account.’
Next week I’ll tell you how you can have the best of both worlds by setting up Outlook Express to work with your Gmail account.
Chris Guld
www.GeeksOnTour.com
judy harding
I was wondering if anyone knows of a system you can set up in your home ,while you are traveling, that you can monitor the inside of your home from your laptop?
Judy
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Houston
Listen. Do not have an opinion while you listen because frankly, your opinion doesn?t hold much water outside of Your Universe. Just listen. Listen until their brain has been twisted like a dripping towel and what they have to say is all over the floor.
Au Pair
very nice web site. My English is not so good, so I do not understandt it well, but it seems very good. Thanks
olstuf33
I use the above address along with another one or two to send and receive mail. If I have access to a wi fi system or DSL at our winter site I can easily get my mail. I have a server for the dial up system at home as DSL is not available yet there. I do not use their assigned account although I could. There are many places where we fi is available free or only a nominal charge such as Burger King etc. Public libraries generally have wi fi now. No business is ever done over the net and any private info is not sent nor received on email accounts. It is handy to be able to use email for general communication.
Doug Smith
In addition to Gmail, Yahoo! mail has free accounts. Mine is configured to also check my ISP email accounts if I click on the icon to do so. Only use that option when I’m travelling and leave the messages on the server so I can download them when I get home.
Al
Hi Chris;
Your suggestion to use ” mail2web.com ” brings up the question: How wise is it to give out my address and password to a 3d party I know nothing about. The fact that I use Yahoo for my mail means I implicitly trust Yahoo not to misuse that information.
Please explore the subject in a future blog. When you ask someone to collect your e-mail, they can easily read everything collected on your behalf.
Keep up the excellent educational information flow on all your blogs.
Robin Brumfield
Good article about using webmail while on the road. However I do not advocate it due to the fact that it is very graphics intensive and can take forever if you have a poor Internet connection. What I generally recommend is that you change the settings in Outlook to leave your email on the ISP servers while on the road and then use Thunderbird since it is pretty good at ignoring the graphics even in HTML mail. It can be set to generally deal with email as text which is much quicker. In addition, with the addition of a couple of add-ons, you can set it up to get Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail as well as IMAP and POP3 accounts. I have seven email accounts that I monitor while on the road and three are the webmail accounts that I mentioned. All are checked at one time with Thunderbird so there is no bouncing around from website to website. In addition, there is a version of Thunderbird that works with a U3 drive so if you want to, you could go to a public computer that had access to the Internet and if it has a USB port available, you don’t even need your own computer to check your email. Of course you could use the webmail on the public computer but as I previously stated, that has performance issues that I don’t like dealing with.
In speaking of gmail as an alternative, Netscape offers an account for $6.95/month that gives you one email address and dial-up access to a plethora of local numbers across the country. I use the dial-up access as a source of last resort when I need to do banking or check email and there are no “hotspots” or other source of high-speed access available. In addition, it uses authentication on the SMTP servers so whatever ISP carrier you happen to be on is ignored. Some ISP mail systems require you to be on their IP segment to send email through their servers so that forces you into using webmail for those ISPs that have that restriction.
Just some food for thought.