It's happening - AOL jumps into free e-mail business

[trew]

Suppose I felt trustful enough then to activate my IMAP4 in an email client.

would you choose OutlookExpress or Thunderbird or Opera M2? Which one is easiest to set up for a dummie like me?

trew

[Sydney]

Originally posted by kaptitsky
if you go to http://communicator.aol.com download & install, you will find that your answer is no, that you need an aol.com address.

is that what you found?

Thank you, that is what I wanted to know.

[kaptitsky]

Originally posted by trew
Suppose I felt trustful enough then to activate my IMAP4 in an email client.

would you choose OutlookExpress or Thunderbird or Opera M2? Which one is easiest to set up for a dummie like me?

trew

Outlook Express is old, has limits. M2 is interesting, but it doesn't think about mail in a way that gets me -- views and such without clear understanding.

Thunderbird is developing, does IMAP well, is free. I'd use it.

[xmailer]

This time I can't move a message which I had accidentally deleted out of the Trash and back into the Inbox. Like I said, IMO the webmail wasn't/isn't ready to come out of beta yet. But considering how brief the beta period was, perhaps that shouldn't be surprising.

Edit: To be thorough, I've tried moving messages between other folders, and the move function isn't working at all for me at the moment. I've reported the bug to AOL, but given how big a hurry they seem to have been in to get past the beta stage, I can't say I'm overwhelmingly confident that they'll pay much attention to my report.

[rgarcia]

Originally posted by trew
Suppose I felt trustful enough then to activate my IMAP4 in an email client.

would you choose OutlookExpress or Thunderbird or Opera M2? Which one is easiest to set up for a dummie like me?

trew

I tried a aim email account in Thunderbird and it works fine(so far). I haven't tried it in any other email client so far though.

[kaptitsky]

It's the same codebase for aol.com webmail and netscape.net webmail, so you might guess they all have the same problems.

Sure looks like AOL is doing this on the cheap, something you can't say about Google.

Originally posted by xmailer
This time I can't move a message which I had accidentally deleted out of the Trash and back into the Inbox. Like I said, IMO the webmail wasn't/isn't ready to come out of beta yet. But considering how brief the beta period was, perhaps that shouldn't be surprising.

Edit: To be thorough, I've tried moving messages between other folders, and the move function isn't working at all for me at the moment. I've reported the bug to AOL, but given how big a hurry they seem to have been in to get past the beta stage, I can't say I'm overwhelmingly confident that they'll pay much attention to my report.

[xmailer]

Originally posted by kaptitsky
It's the same codebase for aol.com webmail and netscape.net webmail, so you might guess they all have the same problems.

Sure looks like AOL is doing this on the cheap, something you can't say about Google.

I used to have a netscape email account a long time ago, which may have been before AOL acquired it and it may have been a different webmail interface at that time. But after my account stopped accepting my password, which I knew was correct, and help requests to netscape support went unanswered, I lost all interest in their so-called service.

[webnote]

Originally posted by xmailer
I used to have a netscape email account a long time ago, which may have been before AOL acquired it and it may have been a different webmail interface at that time. But after my account stopped accepting my password, which I knew was correct, and help requests to netscape support went unanswered, I lost all interest in their so-called service.

as l have mentioned in my another posting netscape has been a neglected child. it's so unfortunate .....

[xmailer]

Originally posted by xmailer
This time I can't move a message which I had accidentally deleted out of the Trash and back into the Inbox. Like I said, IMO the webmail wasn't/isn't ready to come out of beta yet. But considering how brief the beta period was, perhaps that shouldn't be surprising.

Edit: To be thorough, I've tried moving messages between other folders, and the move function isn't working at all for me at the moment. I've reported the bug to AOL, but given how big a hurry they seem to have been in to get past the beta stage, I can't say I'm overwhelmingly confident that they'll pay much attention to my report.

Since it was mentioned in a previous post as a means of accessing aim.com email, it might be worth noting that although mail2web.com does let me view the messages in any of my aim.com folders, I can't see any provision for moving messages between folders through their interface; however, using xs2mail, I am able to do via the web what neither mail2web or AOL's own web interface seems able to do reliably.

[kaptitsky]

I've generally been pleased with IMAP access. It works better than accessing an AOL.com mail account with IMAP, maybe because it doesn't have to follow the AOL client software limits.

As a quick, easy, 2Gb IMAP mail account, well, fine and good. And POP3 is coming soon, good for mail checkers at least.

As webmail, well, that's a bit of a joke now, isn't it? The 20 minute beta test is over, while another beta is now in its 14 month. . . . .

Netscape.net was AOL's first attempt at an ad-supported portal, soon after they purchased Netscape. But now, Netscape.com is a low end ISP to compete with Netzero and Netscape.net is basically a neglected child, with the focus moving over to AIM.com -- after all, with over 100 million screennames out there, (not quite over 100 million users how can they fail?

Well, it's AOL. If anyone can find a way, they have proved that they are the ones that can.

So now it's Yahoo for the quickest good POP3 mail (except with a .com address), AIM for the quickest good IMAP4 mail and Google for the quickest & best webmail. Only one major not in that list.

I still have lots of mail accounts, still love the little guys who I found when I left AOL like 6 or 7 years ago, and have my domain mail healthy, but heck a quick, easy IMAP server, simple (without all the LDAP and server filters and such)? Good.

I'll yell tomorrow when I find they filter Yahoo Groups with pictures, and don't even leave the mails in spam folder or tell me they were discarded.

It's AOL, after all.



edit: just for the record, it's been about 18 hours and yahoo groups seem to be working fine into aim, or at least poco, treating imap like pop3 thinks so. )

[trew]

Thanks for all good advices. To not overload my thunderbird with too many accounts I set up aim.com in mozilla instead. Worked instantly. I chosed the wrong aim screenname though. Too easily spammed so if I ever would change to aim.com I most likely would scrap this one and create a new aim screenname.

trew

PS 2G with imap and most likely pop3 in near future is not to just throw away for compusive collectors of emailservices.

[gdg]

Does anyone have experience with putting offline mail into the AIM folders via IMAP?

[Javier]

Originally posted by gdg
Does anyone have experience with putting offline mail into the AIM folders via IMAP?

Yesterday I tried to do it. First problem, AIM just allow a level of nested folders (folder + subfolder). Also when using the webmail, all folders appear at the same (first/only) level. Anyway, seems to work fine (but there is no information about quota used).

[kaptitsky]

Originally posted by gdg
Does anyone have experience with putting offline mail into the AIM folders via IMAP?

Since you can't do that on an AOL mail account via IMAP, I was dubious, but it seemed to work OK in the small sample I copied from local folders in Thunderbird to AIM.com

[kaptitsky]

the promises aim is making:

AIM Mail lets you...


* Clone yourself, in a good way
You only have to log in once to access both your AIM Mail and your IM.


* Hoard for sentimental reasons
Your AIM Mail has 2GBs of storage. Save anything and everything that matters.


* Exude that confident glow
We've got you covered with industry-leading spam and anti-virus protection.


* Be spontaneous
If an email sender is available on IM, you can reply with either IM or AIM Mail.


* Preserve important relationships
Have second thoughts about that email you just sent to an AOL or AIM address? Then unsend it - unless it's been opened, in which case you're on your own.


* Secretly indulge in obsessive behavior
Check to see if an email you've sent has been read by its recipient. Check again. And again. Sometimes this is very useful. Sometimes it's dangerous.


* And coming soon...
Check and send AIM Mail messages from Microsoft Outlook or any other IMAP-compliant email program.