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Email Introduction

An immeasurably large thanks to TuscanEvenings for this comprehensive discourse

1. SMS and email. These are two completely different beasts and having one will not affect the other. Think of SMS like a pager. While you get near instantaneous delivery (most of the time!) generally you can't do things like attach photos, files etc. SMSs were designed to be used on the tiny screens of mobiles past and the 12 button keypad. Email, well, you know email...


2. Reading email. Firstly, an email server (the computer that collects your email) can display your email using a wide variety of methods. By using Yahoo! you are actually using "Webmail". This essentially is an interface on the website (Yahoo!, Hotmail, etc) that accesses your mail on the mail server and allows you to manipulate it. I presume from your post that you use the web browser to access your email on the Treo?

You can also use email software like Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora etc on your home computer to access the mail server as well, without going through the web browser (such as Internet Explorer). As you have gathered, these are more efficient in logging on and processing your mail as they store your passwords and do not have to work on creating a "web page" to display your email (and add ads and other nonsense etc).

Snappermail, Versamail, the Email application on your Treo, etc, are similar to the above email software. Setting email programs up to connect to email servers is still one of the most confusing things for newbies, unfortunately. But once you get it right on the Treo, you'll have a very efficient and clean method of picking up you email on the move.

3. Considerations: POP or IMAP. There are 2 major ways that email programs contact, read and manipulate email off the server, POP and IMAP. You use POP essentially if you want to download email from the server to your computer or Treo. Generally this means that once it is downloaded, it is no longer on the server. This is a neat way to know that when mail arrives -- it must be new, as it hasn't been downloaded yet.

IMAP on the other hand doesn't download the email but provides a sort of "window" to your email server. In order to know that mail that's arrived is new and hasn't been read yet, it has to be able to tell if you have read the mail already or not. It does this by synchronising the "flags" on the email. Flags essentially say whether an email has been replied to, read, forwarded, erased etc. This is pretty similar to Webmail which in essence "opens a window" too, but displays it on a web page instead.

The reason this is of consideration is that some email programs are good in POP but not IMAP, some do IMAP only and some are good at both. Also, not all email providers have IMAP. Yahoo! for instance only has POP, but you'll need to pay to access Y! POP email. Also, since IMAP does not download the email just like Webmail, you'll have to know if the storage space provided is enough for you. Yahoo! for instance gives you 250MB. If you use POP and download everything to your laptop, then this is a non-issue.

4. Push email? There's a lot of hype about this lately. Not everyone needs it. True "push" email means that when a new email lands on your email server, your email program knows about it very quickly, and tells you that new mail has arrived. Unless email is mission critical, most people live with programming the email program to check email every 5, 10, 15 minutes etc. Very few email software does true "push" and sometimes you need to pay for a different server to collect email and push it to you (like Blackberry).

Not wanting "push" opens your options to more software.

5. Service provider. Once you have decided on whether 1) you need push email, 2) POP or IMAP, 3) still need Webmail e.g. on holiday without your Treo, this will guide you to choosing an email service provider. Look around, I have my own but also use fastmail.fm (POP, IMAP, Webmail and push email using a Treo program called ChatterEmail) and gmail (POP only!). The service providers will have FAQ pages telling you how to set up your POP or IMAP email software to collect email.

6. Software for Treo. Your decision on push, POP or IMAP will have some effect on the choice. But generally my advice is to take advantage of trial periods and try software. The reason is that the interface is usually an important factor in choosing as well.

7. Rx. Since you are relatively inexperienced still, I suggest you sign up for a free fastmail.fm account, and use your built-in Treo email software with POP. Despite it being POP, it allows you to leave email on the server as well without downloading (similar, but not the same as IMAP).

This allows you to get familiar with using an email program, but also gives you the flexibility to read email from a web-browser at home, or to try out Outlook etc. You'll soon find a few niggles, such as if you've answered to emails on your Treo, it won't be reflected on your server, etc. If you can't live with this, then you'll need to use IMAP and get another Treo program.

Don't worry about entering the wrong information when configuring email software - we all get it wrong once in a while. It won't delete all your email or crash the server. At the worst, you won't be able to connect to the server or send email!

Hope that helps!

Yes, TuscanEvenings, yes it did. For those who are interested, the above was originally posted here: http://mytreo.net/forum?topic=8572.msg84174#msg84174

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CategoryTreoGeneral