Email Tips

This week's video tip is a HelpMeRick.com first...it involves 3 videos to cover the topic of Gmail. Directly above each video below, I give a short synopsis of the videos contents. The more I use it, the more impressed I am with Gmail. If you currently use Gmail, don't be afraid to watch these videos as you might pick up a tip or two yourself.

Google offers a good Help section covering their email system, and you can find it by clicking here. My short video series here are meant to just get you started quickly and give you the highlights of this email system.

Believe it or not, there are still folks out there using dial-up Internet. As email attachments grow in size with full-size pictures and videos, even email can be difficult for dial-up users.

Although this tip targets one particular Internet provider, ANY computer user will benefit from the advice I give at the end of the article. In Western Colorado, a company called Bresnan provides a large swath of the cable services...including cable Internet. Overall, I have no problems with the Bresnan service. They run an extremely speedy and pretty stable Internet connection.

However, my beef with the service has always been their sub-standard email service.

• Only 50 megabytes of space per email address (most services offer 1000 megabytes and up)
• Horrific spam filtering...filters legit email, and lets a lot of spam through
• Web mail application is among the worst I've seen

Over the past few weeks, Bresnan customers have been pleasantly surprised to see that all of the sudden 99% or more of their spam messages have stopped arriving in either their screened mail folder or their inbox. They were happy. What they and I didn't start to figure out until this week was

In our monthly computer user group today, the discussion some how made its way to disposable email addresses. Many web sites offer free, disposable email addresses you can create for one time use to sign up for a temporary web services, or make an inquiry to a web site that you don't want to have your real email address. Beyond anonymity, using a disposable email address will reduce the amount of spam that comes into your real email inbox.

We love Cloudmark Desktop. It is the best spam filter on the planet and that has been proved by very complicated scientific tests.

The only problem with Cloudmark Desktop is that it only works in Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird. Until now, Vista users who wanted to benefit from the powerful filtering of Cloudmark had to switch their email application over to Thunderbird or Outlook. It would not work in the free Windows Mail (Vista version of Outlook Express).

Well, those days are gone. Cloudmark has released a beta version of Cloudmark Desktop for Windows Mail.

It's been almost one year since I first posted this tip. We have many new visitors this year, and not enough of you are heading my advice yet on this subject, so I'm posting it again. Please believe me when I tell you that this tip alone can save you countless dollars, time, and tears!

Through my travels, I have noticed that many computer users save emails with pictures because they are unsure of how to save those pictures. Saving lots of pictures in your email program can drastically slow down the performance of the email program over time. Email programs typically can handle thousands of messages, but if something happens to the email database, and you haven't backed up those databases, the pictures will be gone for good. Your best insurance for saving pictures is to save them to a folder on your computer (like My Pictures or a subfolder of My Pictures) then back them up on a regular basis.

To save pictures from your email to a folder on your hard drive, do the following:

Outlook Express

1. Click the paper clip icon in the preview pane*
2. Click Save Attachments
3. In the "Save To" box at the bottom of the dialog box that pops up, click Browse and choose where YOU want to save the pictures and click OK
4. Click Save

* If you read your Outlook Express email in its own window, then RIGHT Click on the

Three weeks ago, I switched from using Microsoft Outlook (which I had used since 1998) to Gmail.

What is Gmail?

Gmail is the fast, free web based email from search giant Google. Gmail offers free POP3 access (if you want to download your email into Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc), 6.5 GB of storage (and the number continually grows), and the best web based spam filter I've seen so far.

If you really like saving all of your email, you might seriously consider getting a Gmail account. With today's emails sometimes weighing in at 5 megabytes and more, email programs (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc) can get extremely sluggish. Sluggish performance eventually leads to corrupt data which means you lose all your email.

You can take steps to avoid this, however, by following a few simple

If you missed a previous issue or issues of the Castellini on Computers email newsletter, you can read it here at HelpMeRick.com where we post it without any formatting or links.

If you would like to read it with the foratting and links, head on over to our newsletter archives for all of our previous issues in all their glory.

You can back up your address book very simply to a floppy disk or USB Flash drive and the heartache it has the potential to prevent far outweighs the thirty seconds it takes to complete the task. Follow these steps depending on the program you use:

 Outlook Express Windows Mail Users

1. Insert USB Flash Drive
2. Start Outlook Express 
   
3. Click the Address Book icon from the toolbar.
4. Click File --> Export --> Other Address Book from the menus
5. Choose the Text (CSV) option
6. Click Next
   
7. Click in the Save In box and choose your flash drive
8. Type "address book backup" in the File name box
9. Click Save
10. Click OK after backup completes
11. Pull out your disk, label it and keep it someplace safe

Windows Mail Users(Vista)

1. Insert USB Flash Drive
2. Start Windows Mail
   
3. Click File --> Export --> Windows Contacts from the menus
4. Choose CSV option
5. Click Export
   
6. Click in the Browse button and choose your flash drive
7. Type "address book backup" in the File name box
8. Click Save
9. Click Next
10. Put a checkmark in the First and Last Name fields
11. Click Finish
    
12. Click OK after backup completes
13. Pull out your disk, label it and keep it someplace safe

Thunderbird Users

1. Insert a USB Flash Drive
2. Start Thunderbird
3. Click Window --> Address book from the menus
4. Click File --> Export
5. Click in the Save In box and choose your flash drive
6. Type "address book backup" in the File name box
7. Click Save
8. Pull out the disk, label it and keep it someplace safe

AOL Users

Version less than 6.0, Start AOL, open the address book, insert a floppy or USB flash drive and use the "Save/Replace" button to save your address book.

Versions greater than 6.0 do not have the option of saving to a floppy because the address book is actually saved on AOL's computers.

Juno Users

Refer to the instructions at Juno's web site for details if you are using Juno 5.0 or earlier. Juno Platinum users can retrieve email in Outlook Express and use the instructions above.