URGENT (A family member may have to travel soon). Are there any online
services that would enable you to read and send e-mail while away from
home, assuming you register in advance? That is, once you register,
could you walk into a library, say (or a cyber-cafe) and get my
e-mail? We have Opt Online as our ISP and use Microsoft Outlook for
mail.

Greetings bbb,

Reading email while away from home is something that many people do on
a pretty regular basis. Some people use it to check their personal
email while at work, while others use it while away on vacation as in
your particular case.

There are a few different options for getting your mail remotely. You
can use a web-based service where you can read and send email from any
web browser. You could also use your own laptop computer and dial-up
to a foreign ISP (or connect wirelessly) and get your email that way.

From your question, I'm assuming that you want to check your email
from a browser as this is the easiest and doesn't require any
additional hardware to drag around with you. You say that you have
"Opt Online" as your ISP. I'm going to assume that this is "Optimum
Online", high-speed internet service from Cablevision. Many large ISPs
have started offering web-based email to their customers at no
additional charge and Opt Online happens to be one of them. By simply
logging into their website with your username/password (for your ISP
and/or email connection at home) you can read and send email straight
from their website. This is really the best scenario because the
service resides on their servers and there's no problem with relaying
or other issues that might crop up.

You can access their webmail service here:
http://www.optonline.net/Home

...just click on "Webmail Sign In" at the top of the page. 

If for some reason this doesn't work for you, or this is not your ISP,
just use the "ask for clarification" button and I'll give you some
other web-based services that will work with virtually any ISP.
Otherwise, I hope this accomplishes your goal and I wish you a safe
trip.

Sincerely,
PWizard

Search Strategy: Opt Online Webmail

bbb-ga,

I interpreted your question to mean that you want to access mail that
is coming from a POP server directly to your current Outlook box, only
from a remote location or a location other than your home computer.

This can be different from accessing mail from a web-based email
account. Web based email services such as Hotmail primarily offer a
small amount of space and are free to use. You sign up, you give your
new @hotmail (or whatever) name to the people you want to correspond
with, and they send you mail directly to the Hotmail server.

Some ISP's offer both POP and Web based email systems so you can
download mail from their mail server either into your web mail box or
your Outlook box, OR both!

If you want to access your POP account, that is make the mail coming
from Opt Online's mail server available for downloading and viewing on
any computer, you can do one of two-three things:

1) You can sign up with Hotmail.com (for one example) and input
OptOnline's mailserver information into the POP Mail section on
Hotmail. You will need OptONline's POP server address (you can find
this in your Outlook preferences or from OptOnline but it's usually
going to be mail.optonline.com or mailserver.optonline or something
similar). You of course need your mail account's username and
password.

Once you put in the POP address into the field in Hotmail, you can
download mail from OptOnline's servers for viewing in Hotmail. Also,
you can set it up so that the mail REMAINS on OptOnline's servers so
when you get back to your home computer you can redownload the same
mail. This is in case you want to have copies in your Outlook box.

The mail that comes in from your POP account will have a different
symbol next to it to differentiate it from mail that is coming
directly to your Hotmail account (your @hotmail.com name).

I have done this and it works very well. You can even POP more than
one account. The last time I used Hotmail I believe they allowed up to
4 or 5 accounts.

2) If your ISP has this feature, you can have the mail coming into
your OptOnline account forwarded to another, web based email address.
Inquire with your ISP as to whether this option is available with
them.

Another way I know of to access mail remotely, although I rarely use
it, is TelNet. This would require you to have a command line in DOS,
though so it is not web based. It is good if you are using a friend's
computer and they have Windows. You just need to have the information
to TelNet into your email account. I have little experience with this
but my friend does it quite often. It's also completely text based
since it's in DOS so you won't have a graphical interface (GUI) and
will need to enter commands to move around your mailbox. You need to
bring up your MS-DOS prompt to begin.

I went to OptimumOnline's website and found a very helpful FAQ page
which I will address your concerns:

OptimumOnline Support for WebMail
http://www.optonline.net/Cservice/Article/0,3994,channel%3D68%26article%3D1993857%26type%3Dreg,00.html#webmail

"Q: How do I sign up for Optimum Online Webmail? 
A: Webmail is a FREE service provided to all Optimum Online
subscribers. There is no need to sign up. Simply proceed to the log in
page and sign in with your user id and password. You can log in from
the Optimum Online homepage at http://www.optonline.net by clicking on
the green Webmail icon at the upper-right corner of the page."

OptimumOnline Server Names
http://live.faq.cv.net/OptOnlineNet/faq_cda_optOnlineNetTopic_Redux?contentgroup_id=51&site_id=21&topic_id=821#question4031

"Q: What are my POP3 and SMTP server names? 
A: SMTP SERVER: mail.optonline.net 
POP3 SERVER: mail.optonline.net" 

Good luck!

Sincerely,

Filian

HELPFUL LINKS:

Hotmail
http://www.hotmail.com

EudoraMail
http://www.eudoramail.com

www.mail2web.com I find very useful.

jeremymiles-ga