Email accounts

[macneechay]

Does anyone recommend Gmail over Hotmail or vice versa for travelling in England, Portugal and Spain? Wither one more or less accessable? Seems like a stupid question I know, but I just want to make sure I can access from any cafe.
Thanks, Sara

[MuvverRussia]

Why would the accessibility change? The world wide web is the same wherever you go (with some notable exceptions - China, North Korea etc).

[macneechay]

Like I said, I knew it was a silly question...just covering all my bases before I go. If they all work the same, then I'll keep what I have. Both have big storage...I'm good.
Thanks
S

[Eagle]

macneechay, not sure where you're located, as it's not listed in your profile. However, if you have an E-mail account at home, there's no reason this won't also work in Europe. I inferred (rightly or wrongly) from your Post, that you were considering starting a new account with one of the providers you mentioned, specifically for travelling?

Which E-mail are you using at home?

[me]

it isn't a bad idea to get a web-mail account (yahoo, gmail, etc. i've used those 2) to use while on the road. accessing your pop mail account can be laborious if you must go through a complicated login every time you want to check your mail.

if you have a gmail invite, it works well! the 2 gigs of mail storage space is great!

good luck!

[kena]

muvverrussia said:

Why would the accessibility change? The world wide web is the same wherever you go (with some notable exceptions - China, North Korea etc).

That's not so sure.

For instance, in Italy, internet booths used a weird custom web browser which did not work with my university's web account and I couldn't access my mail from them . You might also find internet cafes with old versions of common browsers, or some security features disabled that render your email innaccessible.

Whatever account you choose to use, I'd make sure to test it on at least two versions of IE, and on Firefox if access to your mail is critical. Then play a bit with the security settings to see if it still works if you disable Javascript and cookies. You could even try to find an old computer with something like Windows 98 and a dialup connection, and see which account works best.

In my experience, gmail is pretty robust and loads quickly - a must if you have a slow connection and pay by the minute. Also, I think gmail allows you to forward a copy of your emails to another account. That might be a good backup plan.

[MuvverRussia]

Kena - that's a local accessibility issue. Assuming all other things constant (ish - so IE 5+ etc), the world wide web is exactly the same here in London as it is elsewhere.

Most internet cafes are now pretty up to date. I haven't had any problems accessing Novell Groupmail or my Outlook exchange server, even using telephone boxes. Of course, you may get some exceptions, although that's not really going to dictate your choice of email address provider. Anyway, internet cafes are normally 10 a penny now, so if one doesn't work, move on.

You could also configure your cell phone to pick up your email, although for that you'd need GPRS roaming which can work out extremely expensive depending on your provider. Failing that, for POP you can use mail2web.com - reliable and easy to use.

[macneechay]

I'm from Vancouver, at home I have a telus account..but not sure I want to use it, I get far too much spam on it.

I think what I'll do is use gmail as my main email with a backup hotmail account incase I can't access it from Portugal and Spain this summer.

Thanks for all your tips.

Now, if anyone sees that big bag of money that I seem to have lost-let me know will ya??? This trip is costing huge $$$, and I haven't even left yet!!

[LHR02]

hmmmm.....I thought I caught a glimpse of a big bag of money here in Jacksonville a week or so ago....but when I looked again it wasn't there. Will keep an eye out for you though.

[Eagle]

macneechay, it's very helpful to know that you're using Telus for E-mail, as I also use Telus. with regards to the Spam, are you using the Spam filter that is provided? When I activated the filter, I found this cut down the Spam enormously, although unfortunately I'm still receiving a small amount.

Another important "trick" you might check out is the fact that Telus usually offers several E-mail addresses on a single account. One will be designated "a1a", another "a1b", etc. If you were to set up one of the secondary I.D.'s as your "travel E-mail", you should be able to access this from anywhere using webmail.telus.net. I've been thinking of doing this for my next trip, but haven't bothered checking into it yet. It's important though to only provide this address to a few people, so that it doesn't start pickup up Spam as well.

In the past I've used PocketMail while travelling, as it's accessible from just about anywhere in the world using only a phone -- no net cafes are required! Calls are completely toll free in North America, and in major European cities. However I probably won't be using this on my next trip as they don't currently have support for the PDA I'm using and I'm too cheap to buy the PocketMail Composer. These are sold at all Radio Shack stores or you can check their web site, www.pocketmail.com for more info. The service is quite reasonably priced, and is probably a good value if used a lot (compared to the cost of net cafes).

I'll try to check out the Telus "alternate I.D." option this week or early next week, and will post another note if it turns out this might be a solution for travel E-mail.

Cheers!!!