automatic SMTP server selection?

[fuzz]

I have a wireless network at home and at the office. There's a couple things that could be improved and kinda annoys me with OS X. At both home and office, we pick up other people's wireless network. In Network system preferences, it can be set on to automatic, but often times, it won't know which to choose. I can choose one network as my default (ie, my home), but when I get to the office, it won't know which to choose. I've to manually choose it. Can't OS X somehow allow me to pick 2 favorites?

Next, b/c I change networks, can't OS X inteligently change the appropriate outgoing SMTP server in my Mail application automatically? Again, I've to do this manually.

[xero]

two things to consider here...
for your network part... i would encourage you to use Locations. I have a location for home and location for work. At each location I have it set to join "A specific network". this way when i'm at home it won't join my neighbors access point by accident. locations can be easily changed on the fly from the Apple menu > Locations.

now for Mail the way that you have it worded is a little confusing to me. do you mean that you have one eMail address - xero@loopback.edu for example - and you can send mail from two different SMTP servers as that address? meaning that your work domain is loopback.edu but you go home and connect to (SBC, BellSouth, Comcast - whoever) and you can send mail using their SMTP servers as loopback.edu? if this is the case, then someone is running an unsecured mail server... you shouldn't be able to do that unless you are authorized for relaying. (thought to self: maybe they allow relaying for their scope of IPs?)

[mdooner]

The SMTP server is not necessarily insecure. Many SMTP servers use user based authentication. Thats how things work where I go to school; if you authenticate to the SMTP server with a user name and password you can send email from any address. This is how I send mail from my cableco.com account, whose SMTP server only sends mail originating from cableco.com addresses and from clients on the cableco network.

Mail, however, does not appear to support locations (cannot find in preferences, cannot locate in help), so it looks like you will have to manually select the SMTP server one way or another. Good feature request to send to Apple, if I am correct about it already not being a feature

[cfleck]

I'm guessing you have a laptop that you are toting around to these various locations. Having just purchased a new powerbook myself and traveling a lot, I encountered the same problems you are talking about.

The issue you describe with not connecting the correct network automagically, I haven't had. I simply told it to connect to a specific network by default and it joins that network when it is available. No big deal here.

The SMTP thing though, now that I have a solution for. Maybe. I set up my laptop to be an SMTP server. That way I can send mail no matter where I am and I don't have to reset my server every time I change locations. I'm guessing you are running Panther. If so, go google for "Postfix Enabler". It will hook you up in about 2 clicks. Good stuff.

The only thing you have to worry about is that some networks prevent sending mail from your own server. Try it out and see if your mail goes through. If not, talk to the folks who manage the network you are on and see if they can open up the port for you. I use SBC for my dsl and they recently blocked me. I just had to send them an email and tell them I wanted it open and they did it for me.

Anyway, I hope all this helps. Good luck.