No Matter Where You Go, Your E-Mail Can Be There

If you’re on vacation and want to check your e-mail, it’s easy. It just doesn’t look that way.

Checking e-mail remotely is one of those little tech tricks that makes those who know how to do it look terribly clever to those who don’t. It involves knowing only a minor piece of information or two and clicking on a few buttons.

Here’s the simple version of how the e-mail process works: When somebody sends you e-mail, it sits at your Internet provider’s mail server until you check your mail and pick it up. You probably do that with a program like Qualcomm’s Eudora or Microsoft’s Outlook Express on your home computer, but you can pick it up remotely with most of the free, Web-based mail services, such as Yahoo! Mail (https://mail.yahoo .com) or Hotmail (https://www.hotmail.com). For your Web mail account to pick up mail from your home account, all you’ll need is the name of your Internet provider’s server and a log-on name and password.

Generally, a mail server address starts with “mail” and ends with the provider’s domain name, as in “mail.ispname.com.” If you don’t know the name of your ISP’s mail server, just call it and ask. Armed with that piece of information, you’re now free to check your e-mail from anywhere.

While you’re setting up your Web-based account to pick up your home e-mail (on all the services I’ve set up to receive mail this way, this is something you can do by clicking the “options” button when you’re logged in to your account), enter your user name and password. You may be asked to choose which “port” you want to use, but don’t worry; you don’t have to know what this means, because the default setting of port 110 is usually the right one.

When you’re setting up to pick up your e-mail via a free, Web-based account, you’re also generally asked whether you want to take your mail off the server. If you choose to leave the mail on your ISP’s server, your mail messages will still show up as “new” the next time you check your e-mail at home.

After setting up your Web-based mail account to pick up your home mail, go back to your Web mail service’s in box and click on the button that says “POP mail” or “external mail.” (POP stands for “Post Office Protocol,” a standard way for computers to handle inbound messages.) If you have any mail waiting for you, you’ll now get it just as if you were tethered to your home PC--but you’ll be seeing it in a Web browser window, not in the Eudora or Outlook interface you’re used to.

America Online recently changed the name of the system for accessing mail. AOL users can call up https://aolmail.aol.com and check their accounts from any Web-connected computer. Users input their screen name and password and have access to mail, including old mail and sent mail.

Checking work e-mail isn’t quite as simple as checking home e-mail. Many sizable offices have firewalls that prevent people outside the office from getting access to e-mail with just a log-on name and password. That’s because of security concerns.

Ask the tech-support folk at your office what you need to do to get mail from outside the office. If nothing else, they should at least be able to show you how to forward your mail to a free Web account. If you have to go this route, you won’t be able to respond with the same address as you do when you’re in the cube, but most folks won’t notice as long as the name listed on your Web mail account is the same as the name on your work account.

Really, though--perhaps you should stop worrying about all this and work on your tan for a change.

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Christopher Reynolds is on assignment.