How to check your email from anywhere, in any operating system

[jur]

This topic may be a little late in coming, what with gmail and so on; however, if like me you are still using conventional email accounts that you need to check, read on.

The trick is to use Thunderbird. Other mail programs may be equally capable, I don't know, Opera comes to mind. Thunderbird is of course available in windows and linux, and with a simple adjustment, you can make it share the profile folders where all accounts, email and addresses are stored.

In Windows, use ThunderbirdPortable (portableapps.com) which can run straight from the usb drive because it requires no installation. That's important if you want to plug the usb drive into any internet-connected windows machine to check your email.

In tcl, use Thunderbird. After mounting, edit the file /home/tc/.thunderbird/profile.ini to read:

Code: [Select]

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=0
Path=/mnt/sdb1/PortableApps/ThunderbirdPortable/Data/profile
replacing sdb1 with the designation of your usb drive where ThunderbirdPortable is located. (It is better to use a label or UUID because the sdb1 designation could change from machine to machine. I have a little script which mounts the profile folder to /mnt/mail.) Backup the ini file in filetool.

And that's it. Now if you start ThunderbirdPortable in windows, you can set up your accounts and check your mail. You might want to import mail and addresses from your previous app. Once this is set up, and tb in linux is mounted, it will use that same folder with all the info and you can check mail.

Using this setup, I can check my personal mail literally anywhere, at work, at friends, overseas, or any pc at home. (If so inclined, I boot into tcl instead with my fastboot setup and dazzle any onlooking windoze users.)

[PIRAT507]

When I switched from m$ to linux, Thunderbird found all my e-mails from m$ lookout.
My very first email included, dated from almost at the start of internet. (Yes I do make back-ups)
That is very nice. And that is what I like about Thunderbird.
Now I use yahoo mail because my provider doesn't allow private mail servers.