by David Hakala
Spam – unsolicited commercial email – accounts for more than half of all email traffic. In any given month, it is not uncommon to receive several hundred offers to buy things you don’t want. This is true even if you are careful to avoid leaving your email address where it will attract spammers. Every email account should be protected against spam. You need a spam blocker.
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by David Hakala
Q: I use Windows Outlook 2007 on my Vista Ultimate machine. Can you tell me how to turn off the “synchronizing folders” option in Outlook 2007? Whenever this runs, it really hogs the resources, and I don’t know that this needs to be done as frequently as it is being done. Thanks! – Bill
“Synchronizing folders” simply means that Outlook 2007 is sending and receiving email and RSS messages, updating Internet-based calendars, and other tasks that require communication with other computers on the Internet. Many users complain that Outlook 2007 takes far too long and uses far too many resources for this task. But synchronization is not an “option,” it’s an essential feature. You can’t turn it off permanently or you won’t have any email, RSS feeds, etc. You might as well uninstall Outlook, a solution quite a few people choose in favor of Mozilla Thunderbird or another email client, including an earlier version of Outlook.
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by Dee-Ann LeBlanc
There’s nothing wrong with using the default email program in OS X: Apple Mail. However, sometimes you want to use something different, like Thunderbird or Entourage.
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by David Hakala
Spam is “unsolicited commercial email” by most people’s definitions. There is debate over whether non-commercial unsolicited mail should be called spam, but it’s of concern mainly to the nonprofits and political organizations who don’t want to be tarred with the “spam” brush. Unrequested mail from anyone who wants your money or time is spam.
Spam is a huge problem on the Internet. Long ago, spam email passed the 50 percent mark as the largest category of traffic on email servers. Spam imposes heavy costs on ISPs as well as end users. How can you protect yourself from spam and avoid contributing to its traffic congestion?
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by Gabe Goldberg
Anyone who uses email regularly, whether for business or personal communication, gets serious jitters when cut off from it. Fortunately, there are many ways to stay in touch away from home; the biggest problem can be explaining to people you’re visiting or traveling with why you want to.
One reason to stay caught up is that some ISPs impose limits on the amount of email they’ll store for you; if you exceed your quota, subsequent email will be rejected and bounced back to senders. That’s especially bad when it happens to mailing list traffic, since you may be unsubscribed. So, while it’s tedious, it’s sometimes worthwhile to suspend list mailings while you’ll be away.
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by Gabe Goldberg
Spam — junk email offering scams, lost-relative fortunes, exotic romance, drug deals, etc. — is a nasty curse on the current Internet. Technologies are being explored to curb or cure it, and law enforcement has occasional successes shutting down king spammers, but in the meantime, we deal with it.
Most ISPs (Internet service providers) and most email software offers options for handling spam, selecting methods of detecting it and customizing what’s done with it. And add-on software products promise wonderfully precise protection. While these choices can help, they all unfortunately have disadvantages.
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by David Hakala
Email is as vital as a tongue to some people. They can’t imagine getting through a day without communicating via email. For others, checking email is just an occasional thing. But in either case, when people click that “send/receive” button they expect something to happen. When, instead, you get an error message that says in part, “cannot connect to server,” here are some potential solutions to try.
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by Tina Gasperson
Gmail is Google’s web mail service. It’s popular, easy to use, and free. One of the best features of Gmail is that it is easy to archive messages that you’ve already read, and search for them later using Google’s search technology. Google says you’ll never have to delete another message – they give you 7 GB of storage space for free. For that reason, some people have taken to using Gmail like a backup storage service by emailing files to themselves.
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by Gabe Goldberg
What could be simpler than sending email? You type, someone (sometimes many someones!) reads. But aren’t there some people whose email you enjoy reading and some whose notes are annoying or even painful to slog through?
Simple tips will make you a “favored corresponder” and get your email read sooner rather than later.
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by David Hakala
If you are overwhelmed by the tons of email messages that flood your inbox each day, take heart! There are lots of tools in Outlook 2007 that help you sort the wheat from the chaff and prioritize the wheat. Most of these tips work in earlier versions of Outlook, Outlook Express, and Windows Live Mail, too.
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by David Hakala
It’s not difficult to find a specific Contact in any version of Outlook. Just use the “search address books” box in the top-right portion of the main screen. But what if you want to find all business or family contacts so you can send out a request for a quote or an invitation to Sunday dinner? That’s where Categories come in handy.
Go to the Contacts view of Outlook by clicking on “Contact” in the lower-left corner of the main screen. Under “Current View” in the left-hand pane, check the radio button “By Category.”
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