30 minutes on the phone with Roadrunner "technical support" has just about caused me to start drinking early today. As usual, I turn to the source of all world knowledge, Hornfans. Wife has a laptop that she uses at home. We use Outlook for email access. Of course, she has no problems sending and receiving email at her Roadrunner address from home because we're connected to roadrunner directly. For entertainment purposes, I thought I'd tell you what Roadrunner technical support told me Me: "so, can I access my email remotely using Outlook?" Them: "Sir, we cannot guarantee that it will work." Me: "Are you saying that it is supposed to work or not supposed to work?" Them: "Sir, it has to do with the ip address" Me: "what? So, will it work or will it not work?" Them: "Sir, connecting wireless is very risky and your connection has a lot of other stuff coming over." Me: "What?" Them: "Sir, I'm just sayin, that we just can't guarantee anything that goes through the air, you know what I'm sayin?" It goes on for another 15 minutes. Amazing. So, I know I can access my email using webmail, but that is totally crappy because my existing emails aren't there, I don't have any contacts, etc. Is there a way to access my roadrunner email when I am not at home and not using webmail, or do I just need to get her to switch to gmail?
You can access your email using Outlook from a laptop out on the road. Setup the email account the same as you have at home. The pop3 address is always pop-server.houston.rr.com (mine) for instance. No matter where I am, that tells Outlook which pop server to connect to. There are also some 3rd party software to synch your Outlooks - just not sure what the name is. You might check a site like snapfiles.com for this.
Thanks -- it is setup the exact same way as at home. I can receive email, but when I try to send, they get bounced. Is the SMTP server the same when I'm on the road? Meanwhile, I'll look on that site you suggested. Thanks.
No the SMTP is different based on the ISP you are connecting through. If I'm at a hotel in Dallas on their wireless network, I have to find out their SMTP to send. There are also smtp gateways out there that will charge a monthly fee to be your remote smtp server. Then you never have to change it on the laptop. Do a google on "remote smtp" or "smtp gateway", etc. You can also do SMTP Authentication through some Roadrunner accounts. In this case, your email logs in to your home smtp server and sends from there.
When away from home, I usually have to resort to checking my Roadrunner e-mail through a website calledThe Link .
You can use a remote SMTP server when you are on the road, but you have to turn on authentication so that the RR SMTP server will relay your message. Look for the server settings and the spot where it asks you if your ISP requires authentication. Say yes and enter your RR username and password. That should work.
The thing about the Web mail versions is that you won't see email messages that you have already downloaded to your laptop in Outlook. If you can work without those, then definitely use the Web email.
Correct Dan. The advantage of using the RR SMTP and providing authentication is that it will work from home and anywhere else you happen to connect (unless the network blocks POP3/SMTP). If you travel a lot, you will have to change SMTP servers quite a bit if you want to use the local SMTP server.
I don't know about rr in Houston, but in San Antonio, the SMTP server does not allow you to authenticate from outside the rr subnet. I typically send my messages through my office's SMTP server to which I can authenticate from anywhere. If you have no such option, or if you are relunctant to use the office server for personal communication, then you will have to find a local SMTP server. Also, I've encountered some hotel ISPs that block the default SMTP port (25). That's not very accommodating, but it happens, especially on free wireless connections. If I were you, I'd consider switching over to gmail. You may still encounter the port 25 issue, but if you configure Outlook to leave all your email on gmail's server, you can use the web client and not have to worry about missing any messages that you might have already downloaded. You could do this with rr as well, but their mailbox size limits are a joke.
Just run your RR account through Gmail or yahoo, problem solved. Then all you have to do is check gmail or yahoo instead.
Thansk for all the replies. Whatever I do needs to be completely simple, as I can't really get my wife to understand remote SMTP, subnets and blocked port 25s. I didn't know I could run my roadrunner mail through gmail....now that might be a very interesting approach to the problem. I think I'll try that.
Or chop her head of and throw it in the Brazos. This is one of the reasons that I never use ISP email. Yahoo or Gmail will follow you no matter how many times you change Internet providers.
Have you tried going here: https://webmail.austin.rr.com/ Of course the 'austin' part would change if you're not in austin. I know it's not throught Outlook, but it works fine for me.
I switched to gmail when it came out, so I forwarded all my rr mail to my gmail, and have outlook setup for my gmail account. It works great.
