Beverly Williams from United States writes:
I currently have used my email address with Time Warner Roadrunner many, many years. After buying a Win 8 laptop find MS won’t support pop servers accounts. RR told me MS hasn’t told them how to configure their email and to access it through the web which is slow and few options that Windows Mail used to provide. I looked into buying MS Outlook, over $100, but even then think it won’t support my accessing Roadrunner through it. What’s the best option for me?
Answer:
You’ve run into a problem that many users of the Mail app in Windows 8 have, Microsoft discontinued support for older style POP mail accounts. The good news is, there are a few ways you can work around this problem.
Switch POP3 to IMAP: IMAP is a server protocol for e-mail, where the e-mails are saved and stored on the server and your client (ex: Windows Mail, Outlook) just checks and syncs the information. IMAP is considered a better system then POP3, since all e-mail is saved on the server so multiple devices can check the same e-mail box. If you contact your internet service provider they may offer IMAP and have instructions on how to check your e-mail using IMAP.
Stand Alone E-mail Client: Another option is to use a stand alone e-mail client like Mozilla Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook. These e-mail clients support POP3 and in the case of Mozilla Thunderbird can be downloaded free of charge by clicking here.
Use Fetcher in GMail: A popular choice among free e-mail providers, Gmail by Google, can check POP3 accounts and automatically download the e-mail into your g-mail account. This tool, called Fetcher, can be enabled for free on any Gmail account. Click here to read the directions on how to use Fetcher.
-Tim
P.S. You may also want to consider switching off your ISP’s e-mail all together. The problem with using the service providers e-mail address, is if you change providers, move or cancel your account you, lose all of your e-mail. A third-party free provider (Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail etc) solves this problem and lets you keep one consistent e-mail address.
As usual the tips are usually right on and simple clear easy to understand..
Why not just put an icon on the desktop to go to the email account of his choice. Why change at all. I don’t understand. One does not have to use Windows mail as an email account.
Another thought is that there ought to be a way to change the call address of the icon in Windows 8 to whatever email account you want to open with it.
I see this a lot in e- advice about e-mail from WorldStart and others. Don’t use your ISPs e-mail switch to something else and while I don’t disagree with the basis of your reasoning I do see a flaw in it. What you are telling people is just in case some day you might change ISPs go through the pain of switching your e-mail address now so you might not have to later.
In addition to this in actual fact you may switch to something that will go away. There is no guarantee that g-mail will be around forever, or outlook.com, or yahoo-mail. What if someone had switched last year and chosen Hotmail. I realize that Microsoft has said Hotmail users do not have to change their addresses but again there is no guarantee that 3 years from now if there are only 10,000 Hotmail users left that they won’t change their mind, same with Google and all of the rest.
Things change very fast in this industry so why put yourself through a lot of hassle now for something that may never happen, just to risk another change later.