AOL's Poor Email

[MartinLiss]

I've "lived" all my programming life within a sheltered corporate environment, but now that I'm retiring I have to face the cold, cruel, reality of the real world. One step I took in that direction was to sign up for AOL. However after using it for a while I find that its email system compares poorly with Outlook. I have my own copy of Outlook and what I'm wondering is if there are any ISPs out there that will let me use it.

[JungleMan]

Martin, why AOL?

Go with Juno, they cost less per month and provide a faster connection.

[MartinLiss]

I have DSL so I don't need their broadband or (gulp) dialup, but I'll look into those options. It's just such a pain to have to change email addresses again. I think we should all be assigned one at birth and keep it with us.

[siyan]

Originally posted by MartinLiss
I think we should all be assigned one at birth and keep it with us.

1984.....

[blindlizard]

Martin, register your own domain, and get it hosted somewhere that offers POP3 access. Then you can just keep that email until you die, or this internet thing loses its luster.

[parksie]

www.gmx.net have always worked pretty well for me. They've previously had periods of a few hours where they're slightly laggy, but that all gets sorted quite fast, and unless you *really* get a lot of mail it shouldn't cause a problem.

POP3 access for free, if you pay you get IMAP4 as well.

[MartinLiss]

Originally posted by Spetnik
So why ddid you sign up with AOL?

Basically it was ignorance. A year's worth came free with my new PC, and I told myself that millions of users couldn't be wrong.

[parksie]

Millions of users are frequently wrong Stupidity thrives in groups, it seems.

[JPicasso]

Originally posted by Spetnik
Almost all ISPs will. Any ISP that has a POP3 email server. I use earthlink, I think they are great.

By the way, AOL is slower than most dialups because of their proxy system. Check out http://www.earthlink.net.

Three cheers for earthlink..

never had a problem with them....

until my dsl modem melted. (yes, melted)

That's what you get for ignoring all those URGENT RECALL emails.
replaced it within 5 days, no hassle.

[blindlizard]

Originally posted by Spetnik
All of my users are always wrong.

[MartinLiss]

BTW, this may not be the thread to ask this question in since you guys probably don't use AOL, but when I get post notifications through AOL's email, the URL address of the posts are not hot links. Is there anything that I can do besides cutting and pasting the url into my browser?

[parksie]

In AOL's client, I think there are some issues. Most people wrap up an HTML <a> link, and AOL users can click on that.

[siyan]

Originally posted by parksie
www.gmx.net have always worked pretty well for me. They've previously had periods of a few hours where they're slightly laggy, but that all gets sorted quite fast, and unless you *really* get a lot of mail it shouldn't cause a problem.

POP3 access for free, if you pay you get IMAP4 as well.

Yep I wish they still had english service though, but i'm slowly getting the hang of the Spamverdacht-Ordner system....

[parksie]

I don't often go to GMX's site, but when they started their new spam-blocking service I needed to go. Lucky for me I paid attention during my German GCSE

[siyan]

Hehe. I don't either but with the spam thing now I just kind of wing it.....

[MartinLiss]

I think I've found the answer to my prayers! There was one thread in the forums that referred to eNetBot Mail. It's
a

...POP3 / SMTP agent for AOL that allows you to read your AOL mail from any POP3 compliant email program, such as Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora and Netscape mail. You can also send mail from any SMTP compliant mail program.

You don't even have to open AOL in order to send and receive mail! I've only used it for one day, but so far so good!