Electronic-mail (E-mail)

Even the most basic Internet connection has e-mail as its central offering. Most of the traffic on the Internet is electronic mail, allowing people all over the world to communicate at the speed of light. I once sent a telegram from the Cayman Islands - - and beat it home by two weeks! The same is true of e-mail. The ability to toss off a quick note and send it around the world faster than it takes to make a phone call -- and a great deal cheaper! -- is enticing more and more people onto the Internet.

Most businesses now include e-mail addresses automatically on their business cards, and not having one means waiting days for that order your competitor just logged in in minutes. The difference is obvious.

Internet addresses are as precise as snail-mail addresses. They consist of three parts:

• A name (in this case the User ID on the system)
• The "@" symbol.
• The user's domain name.

Thus my address would be:

You can sent mail to users of other systems by using their specific addresses. A few are:

In the last example, Compuserve accounts use a numeric ID, with a comma in the middle. Unfortunately, most mail programs interpret the comma as a separator for two different IDs, so you must substitute a period instead. Also, mail to a Compuserve account often needs to have the domain name enclosed in quotes, for some reason. If you are having a problem sending to a Compuserve recipient, check the spelling and the user ID number first, then try to send using the qu otes.

PINE is a text-based mail program and does not have all the flashy bells-and-whistles of some of the more popular Post Office Protocol -- or POP -- mail programs like Eudora, Pegasus, E-Mail Connection, and others. It handles mail in a totally different manner and as a result, is more reliable, much like an old Chevrolet pickup truck beside Miatas and Porsches. It also doesn't spend as much time in the shop for repairs!

The main difference is that PINE receives mail on a permanent basis, since it is on the provider's system. On the other hand, POP mail usually does not have a permanent IP address to send mail to, so the messages are kept in a holding area, much like Gen eral Delivery at the Post Office. When you log in and identify yourself with your ID and password, POP mail hands the messages across to you.

Unfortunately, since the mail is being moved from one location to another, any interruption in the process can cause the system to lock up. In Unix, under which most of the Internet runs, every command opens a new "process." The interruption leav es that POP "process" -- or POPPER still active. As a result, the next time you log in and try to retrieve mail, the system sees a session still open and gives you an error message which says either "your mail account is locked" or even "your password is bad." It is necessary for either the user or the system administrator to go in and "kill" that POPPER. In the meantime, your mail is locked and you cannot get to it.

Another advantage to PINE is that the mail stays on the host machine at a central location. Thus, whether you call in from home or the office, you can still work with the same mail and save, move, or delete it at will. In POP mail, the messages are most often downloaded to the user's machine and as a result are not accessible from other locations such as the office.

It also allows for selecting a number of similar files, then issuing "aggregate," or mass commands on all the selected messages at once. Thus you can save all the messages from your boss on December 12th, 1994, and print them out as a group. Or you can forward them to someone else, delete them, or bounce them to a colleague for his comments.

The setup also allows you to display messages either in the order they arrived, in alphabetic order (a way to thread messages on the same topics), or by sender.

The most popular programs for the PC are Eudora, Pegasus, E-Mail Connection, and MIcrosoft Exchange. For the Mac, Eudora is also available, as well as Valet and others. In OS/2 Warp, Ultimail is used most often. For users of suites of Internet software , there is Chameleon Mail, Spry Mail, Internetworks E-Mail, and Emmissary Mail.

Before placing your important mail at the mercy of any e-mail program, you should check out the individual programs, hunt for reviews, and perhaps try several before choosing.

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