emails accounts

[murdock]

what email account do you have and why?

i having been thinking about my email accounts...the problem i have is every time i move like from mweb to telkom or to where ever next i have to change my email address and i dont always have access...

so i have to keep sending change of email address.

is it not better just to have an email account with google...gmail...which i have had the longest and i can access it from anywhere?

[IanF]

I would register a domain like murdock.co.za and use that for email. Gmail is what I use for personal account and it is great when you change ISPs. For business it does make you look a bit iffy.

[Neville Bailey]

I use web-based gmail exclusively, for both personal and business purposes.

It has advanced (and still is) over the years and can be used very professionally for business purposes.

I have about 6 different email addresses that I route through my single gmail account, and none of my email contacts are any the wiser that I am using gmail in the background.

Until recently it was a bit tacky, in the sense that recipients would see my email address as "Neville Bailey [neville@accountingsoftwaresupport.co.za on behalf of nvll.bl@gmail.com]", particularly if the recipient was using Outlook 2003 or later. It is now possible to bypass gmail's outgoing server and substitute it with your own smtp server - I use the mailhop smtp service.

It is also possible to use HTML in gmail signatures, which was not possible until recently.

When my Outlook *.pst file started getting corrupt as few years ago, I made the move to gmail and I haven't looked back.

My BlackBerry has Google Sync installed, which allows seamless OTA 2-way syncing between my BB and gmail, in terms of contacts and calendar items. I can even accept meeting requests from an Outlook user and update my gmail calendar.

When my laptop was stolen 2 years ago, I was able to access all my emails, via my BB, including emails from a few years back, because everything was stored on gmail!

I would definitely recommend gmail to anyone!

[Martinco]

I fully agree on the Gmail option. I have also been using this "backup" system for some years and works well.

[AmithS]

If you register a domain for your own email, does this then belong to you? and you can take it to anyone to run for you ?

How does it work & what are the costs like?

[AndyD]

If you register a domain for your own email, does this then belong to you? and you can take it to anyone to run for you ?

How does it work & what are the costs like?

Once you've registered your domain it belongs to you as long as you pay for it each year. You can host with any ISP you choose. Yearly registration costs about a hundred bucks or less from what I remember. Hosting is dependant on your website if you have one and how many email address. This is entirely negotiable with your ISP.

[irneb]

You could even get the same through Google: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/domain.html

[xolitech]

I have setup similar to Neville's and it works very well for me, it serves as a multiple backup systems.

[Nefie]

Cannot agree more with Neville.
Besides the email, Gmail gives you the calendar, docs and more.
And then, when I moved from my Nokia E71 to Samsung Galaxy, I did not even need a PC suite of some sort. I just Synchronised my Nokia with Google, moved the SIM and again Synchronised the Galaxy with Google. And all my contacts, calendar, mail was there. Its awsome.

[AmithS]

So a quick question for the guys using Gmail as a primary or routing\backup system?

Do you use an email client like Outlook or do you just use the Gmail Website as your client?

[Neville Bailey]

I only use the web-based version of Gmail, so I have access to all my emails wherever I might be, even if I don't have my computer with me - all I need is any computer with internet access or my BlackBerry's browser.

I love the idea of not being tethered to any one computer or device.

Posted from my BlackBerry using BerryBlab

[AndyD]

You can set up gmail with IMAP access so you get your mail on your gmail account and on your Outlook mail system which would give you the best of both worlds if you use mobile as well as normal pc mail..

[Dave A]

I've had hassles in the past with an IMAP account in Outlook. Thanks to our marvelous "world class" (dream on JZ) internet in SA, I had major timeout issues which resulted in the occasional lockup of Outlook.

It was a while ago though - have things improved since?

[irneb]

As stated you can connect to GMail through IMAP ... though I'm in agreement that it's slow in SA. Each time you want to read an email it wants to download it again from the server (even if you have it setup to save a local copy). I personally prefer Thunderbird instead of Outlook (it seems to work slightly better with IMAP). You can use POP3 access to gmail, which would alleviate the speed issues (even in OL) since it makes one single copy on your local HDD.

If you have gmail setup correctly (as the defaults already should be) then using POP3 does not delete the mails from the server, thus you can still open them in the web client / through your phone - even though you've downloaded them to your PC already. The only problem I have with POP3 is the opposite: if I want to delete an email from the server, I then have to open the web client. With IMAP I can delete it straight in Thunderbird (or even move it into different "folders" - which are actually GMail's labels).

For me I also work on several PCs throughout the day, but my emails sometimes are a bit large, not to mention I don't just do emailing - so I've installed Thunderbird Portable on a USB external HDD. That can be started from any Win-PC. Then I also have TB in Linux mapped to that folder so it shares the same data. That way I simply need to take the external HDD with me (which has a lot more than just my emails) and plug it into whatever PC is available.

[AmithS]

Hi Neville,

Did you manage to setup your own SMTP sending server for Vodamail ?

Thanks,