Please Help With ISP/Mac Mail Question

aximdude2005 said:
This is by far the most confusing post I have read thus far in my limited experience with macosx.com. I must say it was quite humorous and fun to read.

Anyway, Amie, as you may have learned, you can not use a "free" hotmail account with Mail. I would suggest an alternative:

Start transitioning people over to your T-mobile account or a Gmail account. Obviously you can get a Gmail account from that one dude who offered you an invite earlier in this set of posts. Those Gmail accounts are pretty useful, from what I hear.

Then you should notify your friends to switch. Also, if you can, find out if you can automatically forward emails from your hotmail account to your new email account that supports using such software as Mail. This way, you will still receive email from you hotmail but in your new account. When you reply to them, you will use your new account. Then put a signature at the end of your email pointing out to them that you switched your account and are using it with your reply email.

This is the best way to deal with this situation. Solves several issues.

1) now you can store email on your hard drive and not on the free email account which gives you limited space.
2) free webmail sucks. You will find this out when you start using Mail.
3) you will be able to feel good that you are putting your Ibook to good use.

Hope this helps.

Have fun.

Yes, it WAS confusing. Not much fun, though. (Well, maybe for YOU.) :-b

Anyway, like I said in my previous post: In that case, why on Earth would I want to activate Mail when I already have a free Hotmail account? I've had my Hotmail account for about six years and have never had any problems whatsoever. What would I get out of Mail, besides more confusion and angst of transferring all my contacts and alerting people that my e-mail address has changed?

P.S. I generally don't store e-mail messages for long periods of time, so it's not a problem using free Web mail like Hotmail. I really don't care about that. In the rare event that I'd want to store something, I would just copy and paste it into a document and save it on my computer. No biggie.
 
If you had an e-mail account provided to you by your ISP (which is usually a POP e-mail account), then Mail would be a good alternative. For example...

I have Earthlink DSL. With this service I am given a certain number of POP e-mail addresses. I have one, and my wife has one. I could use the web client Earthlink provides for me to check my e-mail (webmail.earthlink.net), but when I'm at home I would prefer to use a local "thick" client like Apple's Mail or Mozilla's Thunderbird or Microsoft's Outlook. Why would I want to do this?? Well, these thick clients give me the flexibility to do things that I normally wouldn't be able to do I were using the web client.

The good thing about the web client, however, is that I can check my e-mail over the web on ANY computer, without having to configure an e-mail application on each machine I use. It also becomes a security issue because I would be configuring an application with my personal information on a computer that I don't own. The web client allows me to just log in securely and if I wanted to, I could flush out the cache and any cookies to eliminate any personal information.

The nice thing about the web client e-mails is just that: the fact that you can check your e-mail from ANY computer you are on. Hotmail and others have options that prevent your personal information from staying in the cache or cookies file on a public terminal, as well as allowing you to connect securely using Secure HTTP (https) which encrypts your information being transferred back and forth between the e-mail servers and the computer you are on.

Hope this clears up some confusion... :p
 
Amie

My good friend Andy has a free hotmail account. He used to be able to open his hotmail messages on his own computer using Outlook Express (he learnt how to configure POP, SMTP settings etc.). Then one day Hotmail said that he can only do this in the future if he paid an annual fee for his Hotmail account.

Andy decided against this and stuck with his free account. For some years now he has always checked his mail and sent messages using a web browser when on-line.

His ISP is BT Internet, which came with a free email address, but like you, he had been using his Hotmail address for many years and did not want the hassle of having to tell all his mates and other contacts that he had changed to a new address.

May I tell you that Andy is very happy using a web browser to access his mail and has no need for Outlook Express or Mail. He doesn't mind the advertisments he sees on his Hotmail web page and seems to cope with all the endless spam in his intray (although Hotmail's filters seem better these days).

The only thing Andy makes a point of, is to empty the Internet cache if he reads his mail using a public computer (like in an Internet cafe) so that no-one can come along after him and use the back button to read his mail.
 
rhisiart said:
Amie

My good friend Andy has a free hotmail account. He used to be able to open his hotmail messages on his own computer using Outlook Express (he learnt how to configure POP, SMTP settings etc.). Then one day Hotmail said that he can only do this in the future if he paid an annual fee for his Hotmail account.

Andy decided against this and stuck with his free account. For some years now he has always checked his mail and sent messages using a web browser when on-line.

His ISP is BT Internet, which came with a free email address, but like you, he had been using his Hotmail address for many years and did not want the hassle of having to tell all his mates and other contacts that he had changed to a new address.

May I tell you that Andy is very happy using a web browser to access his mail and has no need for Outlook Express or Mail. He doesn't mind the advertisments he sees on his Hotmail web page and seems to cope with all the endless spam in his intray (although Hotmail's filters seem better these days).

The only thing Andy makes a point of, is to empty the Internet cache if he reads his mail using a public computer (like in an Internet cafe) so that no-one can come along after him and use the back button to read his mail.

Thank you for confirming my perspective: Mail ain't nothing great and I don't need it if I already have a free mail account.
:D
 
Amie,
There seems to have been a lot of confusion here and I hope your still checking these. I was looking for an answer to my own hotmail and mac mail problems when I came across this little chat. I think I can help. Unlike many of the responses said, you CAN get your hotmail into Mac's Mail app. I too have had a hotmail account for many years and don't wish to give it up. I also have been getting my hotmail messages into Mail for a while. While you can not download new messages to Mail from hotmail while offline you can look at old messages while offline, which I find useful. I also like to have all of my mail in one place and Mac Mail manages all three of my email accounts very well. Hotmail uses an http protocol which Mail does not support. However, there is a plugin that I've used called httpmail which sort of updates the Mail application to recieve hotmail messages. You can google it or go to
http://www.automagic-software.com/downloads.php
Download the file appropriate for your version of OSX (10.2, 10.3 "panther", 10.4 "tiger") If your not sure which version you have, you can click on the apple icon at the top left of your screen and select "about this mac". It'll have the version number in the second line of the window below the large apple. After you download the file and uncompress it (simply double clicking the downloaded file will uncompress), there should be a new folder, most likely on your desktop with the plug-in in it. There is a very good read-me file included with detailed instructions on how to follow it. I would suggest reading all the instructions first then following them to the T. The read me file also has good instructions on how to set up your hotmail account in the Mail application. I ran this plugin in OS 10.3 for 10 months and never had a problem with it. Just last week I upgraded to 10.4 and tried reinstalling this plugin. I didn't read all the instructions before trying to reinstall and thus did it wrong, which is why I'm now having problems with the plugin. But, if you follow the directions you should be golden to use hotmail in the Mail app! I hope you find this post useful. If you have any questions, you can email me at
audiodragon02@hotmail.com
Good Luck!
 
Audiodragon said:
Amie,
There seems to have been a lot of confusion here and I hope your still checking these. I was looking for an answer to my own hotmail and mac mail problems when I came across this little chat. I think I can help. Unlike many of the responses said, you CAN get your hotmail into Mac's Mail app. I too have had a hotmail account for many years and don't wish to give it up. I also have been getting my hotmail messages into Mail for a while. While you can not download new messages to Mail from hotmail while offline you can look at old messages while offline, which I find useful. I also like to have all of my mail in one place and Mac Mail manages all three of my email accounts very well. Hotmail uses an http protocol which Mail does not support. However, there is a plugin that I've used called httpmail which sort of updates the Mail application to recieve hotmail messages. You can google it or go to
http://www.automagic-software.com/downloads.php
Download the file appropriate for your version of OSX (10.2, 10.3 "panther", 10.4 "tiger") If your not sure which version you have, you can click on the apple icon at the top left of your screen and select "about this mac". It'll have the version number in the second line of the window below the large apple. After you download the file and uncompress it (simply double clicking the downloaded file will uncompress), there should be a new folder, most likely on your desktop with the plug-in in it. There is a very good read-me file included with detailed instructions on how to follow it. I would suggest reading all the instructions first then following them to the T. The read me file also has good instructions on how to set up your hotmail account in the Mail application. I ran this plugin in OS 10.3 for 10 months and never had a problem with it. Just last week I upgraded to 10.4 and tried reinstalling this plugin. I didn't read all the instructions before trying to reinstall and thus did it wrong, which is why I'm now having problems with the plugin. But, if you follow the directions you should be golden to use hotmail in the Mail app! I hope you find this post useful. If you have any questions, you can email me at
audiodragon02@hotmail.com
Good Luck!
Wow. And I thought these people on this forum knew EVERYthing! ;)

Seriously, thanks a lot for all the great information. However, I hardly ever keep/read old e-mails. Once I reply to them, I delete them. I'm very anal and like to keep a tidy e-mail inbox. LOL So, that's really the only reason why I was checking into Mail in the first place--I was thinking that I could inport NEW Hotmail messages into my Mail account while offline. But you said that's not possible, so I guess I won't do the Mail thing. Ah well. Can't have everything, right?

Thanks again for all your help. :)
 
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