December 2008 Afternoon Learners SIG Meeting: A Look at Email

By Len Alder

Len Adler led a discussion of using e-mail applications. He compared the Apple application Mail, Google’s Gmail, and the email available with Pi membership, WAP mail. One participant, Lew, had never used WAP mail, and during the demonstration, found his user name and password. Soon he was accessing WAP mail. The attendees carefully examined the program Mail and expressed some frustrations with it.

The participants discussed which application had the fastest and best tech support, and concluded that each provider has wait times, and is less than ideal.

Five of our many conclusions about email are:

• By using a browser such as Safari and the Web address of the email provider, it is possible to access your email account from any computer.
• Apple’s Mail program requires each user to have registered with an Internet Service Provider (ISP), and rely on them to provide the account settings. WAP mail, which Pi members have as part of their membership, also requires this.
• Attached photos or graphics will sometimes appear in the document window of Mail, and sometimes as an attachment. We don’t know why.
• Google offers a free mail account, with storage exceeding the space provided by most ISPs. Len showed how to create a mail group, use Google documents for large files or group review and editing, and sending files of photos (from iPhoto via Picasso, Google’s online photography service).
• Not only is it possible to have multiple email addresses, but most can be received in one location.

Our topic for January 22 is iDVD, presented by Paul Silverman and Don Fortnum.

Revised February 08, 2009
Washington Apple Pi is an international user group, with a history spanning three decades to the dawn of personal computing. The “Pi” continues to serve users of the very first personal computers as well as users of the most modern, advanced systems through its meetings, magazine, computer bulletin board and Internet services.
URL: http://www.wap.org /retired/retired200812.html