IF YOU TRAVEL OR USE YOUR LAPTOP AWAY FROM HOME, THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST TECH TIPS YOU CAN READ TODAY.

Laptops are not just for business people anymore.  Students just finished the back-to-school wave of purchases for tons of laptops while campuses are now being wired for wireless access in the libraries, classrooms, etc.

And with the fact that the laptop is becoming everyone’s “main” computer, email is managed from that machine as well.  When you set-up an email address the free accounts that come with your Internet service provider, there can be a downside to using these accounts when you connect from remote location that’s not serviced by your ISP — any WiFi hotspot, friend’s house, vacation, hotels, etc.  This is the same situation when trying to use your personal email account on a smartphone, PDA phone like a Treo, Blackberry, or Blackjack.
Depending on your Outlook, Apple email or Eurdora email settings, you may find yourself STUCK with mail in your outbox unable to be sent.  That’s because you need to be connected to your ISP’s network in order to send through their “email gateway”.  (Incoming emails aren’t problem – you can download and read your inbox from anywhere in the world with all regular email accounts out there)   Using web-based email accounts to send emails when you’re away from home could be a solution, but it’s also a hassle to go back and forth, and have emails in different accounts all the time.

Here’s a great tidy solution to the problem of being able to use your laptop anywhere you want, the way you want. . .

You can use a universal “SMTP Gateway service” like SMTP2GO.  It basically will allow you to send outgoing email from any internet connection in the world.  You are not tied anymore to your ISP’s network.  This is a great solution for as little as $1.99 which is good for over 1,500 emails a month (if you’re SENDING more than 1,500 emails a month, they have larger plans, you should also re-evaluate what you’re doing with your time!)
Simply use the worldwide SMTP server as your outgoing mail server and never worry about problems sending emails ever again. Setup takes literally only 2 minutes and involves typing smtp2go.com into your email software’s settings. Send from anywhere in the world — from home, the office, New York, or even Guatemala without changing settings again.

Here’s the sample steps to set it up for Outlook XP/2003.  It’s similar for AppleMail, Entourage, Netscape email, Thunderbird, etc.

Select ‘E-mail Accounts…’ from the Tools Menu of Microsoft Outlook.
Select View or change existing e-mail accounts and click ‘Next’.
Select your mail account and click Change...
Make sure that the email address listed under E-mail Address is one that you have registered with SMTP2Go.

Change the Outgoing mail server (SMTP) setting

Click on ‘More Settings…’
Click on the ‘Outgoing Server’ tab.

Make sure that the setting ‘My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication‘ is disabled.

Click on the ‘Advanced’ tab.
Change your Outgoing server (SMTP) Port Number to 2525. You can also try using Port Number 25. Make sure that the setting ‘This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL)’ is disabled.

As you can see it’s pretty simple to change the settings.   Once done, it’s permanent, you don’t have to change it back when you get back home — you can just keep on using it as-is.



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