My %#$&^$%@ Email

It seems like there have been more problems recently with Email. They seem mostly be caused by AOL Email or by Microsoft's Outlook. However, a solution to these problems is here.

Being the house Nerd that was not able to get AOL email back working has me sleeping in the dog house. What happened is that AOL was the email and software of preference for years. Then dialup (remember when this was the only Internet access we all could use), passed on and high speed access from Comcast (xfinity) and Verizon (FIOS) moved into its place.

So AOL then started to reduce the price of its service down to $9.95 per month, then lower and finally to nothing. So my girl and I slowly migrated to the lower prices. Gone were the days of my nephew's $400 telephone bill that I had to pay (it was my phone) because he called AOL in Annapolis and stayed signed for a month. To keep its customers and its revenue AOL developed software that made the AOL web site look slick. They added all kinds of free virus scanning and speed up features to make you think that their software was special. These features were largely ineffective and made the PC run slowly. So finally at great peril I moved my girl to using the AOL web mail. Now keep in mind she has all her contacts sending email to AOL email.

One day a week or two ago, she could not log in to AOL. Now there is big trouble. No email is BIG trouble. So as the house nerd, I tried to login to AOL. I used every password combination she had used with no luck. So in desperation I tried to call AOL. Just forget that because there is no phone number on their web site. The AOL site said that paying customers could talk to someone. So I was ready to pay. I followed the links closely and what do you know they led to a spot that said log on to AOL with your existing account and change your billing status. Since I could not log on, that was a great idea. I resigned myself to sleeping in the dog house.

Outlook is a different problem. Outlook has a limit to the size of the email file with which it can work. The size is 2 GB. The Outlook file name is the OUTLOOK.PST file. Archiving data and deleting old messages can slow the growth of this file, but many people reach this limit. When Outlook get there it begins to act crazy. Outlook starts running out at night and howling at the moon and other weird things. The solution is to reduce the size of the Outlook PST file.

Actually the better solution and the point of this article is to use Web based Email like GMAIL and Yahoo mail among others. Gmail has the same Email, Calendar and Contact features as does Outlook with some added benefits. Gmail can consolidate all emails into a single Gmail account. It can fool (spoof) other emails and make people who you send mail think that it came from the account to which they sent the original email. If you sent email to my Verizon email, the response email would look like it came from my Verizon email and not Gmail. The calendar can be shared to coordinate activities, and contacts from other email programs are readily imported as Comma Separated Variable (CSV) files into the Gmail contacts. Finally, Gmail stores all email off site so a PC crash does not cause all your email to be lost. You can store about 7GB for free. After that you pay Google. Because Gmail is web based there is little impact on PC performance as well. Gmail seems to have the lead in features and ideas now, but others like Yahoo should catch up quickly.

When you transition to a new email, it is not as difficult as perceived. All those contacts that you lost, well most of them do not write you anyway. Like my kids, then never write. All that is needed is to tell all your important contacts the your new email address is whatever it has become. So now it the time to take proactive action and move to web email to save you from sleeping with the dog.