Dumping Compuserve (Almost)?

[dgermann]

Hi--

This is almost a technical question, so perhaps this is a good place to post it.

I am getting fed up with all the difficulty connecting to CI$ and the surfeit of spam they let through. So I am probably going to dump it as my main mail isp.

1. Years ago there was a post about getting a plan that was $3.95 a month or thereabouts. What number do I need to call to get that? What is the plan called, and what do I need to do to get it?

2. What am I giving up if I dump CI$ entirely? (I don't use the forums much, except for some help recently with accessing CI$ mail. I think my main concern is people who try to e-mail me using my old address. So I think I could keep CI$ for a few months just to catch the stragglers....)

Thanks for any help or stories you can share....

[Dan in Saint Louis]

a plan that was $3.95 a month or thereabouts. What number do I need to call to get that?I just called the regular number and asked for the $2.95 plan. They knew what I meant.
What am I giving up if I dump CI$ entirely?Dial-up access, if you use it; and an email address. The forums are only Web access and anybody can come in.

[davidh]

Doug,
If you intend to use TAPCIS or CS 4.0.2 to access CIS with HMI protocol during your changeover period, you may want to consider weighing the 1 free hour with $2.95 plan versus 3 free hours with $4.95 (lite pricing, possibly introduced for consistency with AOL's lite plan?) plan, depending on how many minutes of HMI you expect to use.

DH

[heinz57g]

doug, changing the email address certainly will not rid you of scams and spams and
whatever - if you read trade mags, it is frightening what 'those' people figure out,
and how much money is involved, to get you. and they will.

giving up compuserve: yes, many posts have said it is the way to go. i personally
disagree for reasons that might be very specific to myself.

such as dial-up accces in emergencies, during travel, as good as worldwide. you
only miss it when it is to late.

nostalgia: i like my 1986 email address, thousands of people have used it, hundreds still do.

TAPCIS: nothing to say there. i have heard all the arguments, my TAPCIS still handles
as many as 300 mssgs on bad days.

keeping CIS and being spam-free: quite possible to a degree. use POP3 access only,
with an online reader like MAIL2WEB, sort out spam manually, quick and easy. getting slower
and slower by the day recently, as more people use it and think the world is free, but maybe it
will pick up again.

even better, an offline reader (yes, there are some besides TAPCIS) such as ePROMPTER.
lets you quickly log on, anything from broadband to dialup, logs off and lets you read
simple mails, sort them and weed them, easily. quite enough for simple answers too
(mine are 100+/day). cleans you CIS account simply and easily too. manually, yes, but
very efficient.

best solution: use one of the newer clients like THUNDERBIRD and many similar
that use POP3, but have efficient, virus, trojan, spam and scam filters built in. after
a short while training them you will think there is no more spam arriving at your CIS
account (but dont let this fool you: there is).

last not least, the new methods GMAIL has invented if you want to remain mainly online.
it lets you read your CIS account, and lets your write from GMAIL appearing to the
outside as if written from inside your old CIS account.

and, with all of this, you keep your CIS account and its address for some 2.95/month.
and belong to a community. a word that is vanishing slowly from the meaning i used to know.

makes sense? let me know.

greetings - heinz -

PS: if you noticed a lot of repetitions of 'easy' and 'efficient' and 'fast' and similar, i made my point.

PPS: WOW! i read your signature line well after i wrote that last paragraph above (community ...).

[Lindsey]

I am getting fed up with all the difficulty connecting to CI$ and the surfeit of spam they let through. So I am probably going to dump it as my main mail isp.
To be perfectly honest, this is why I gave up using my CompuServe account for mail as well. There was just too much spam to deal with. But that said, you may want to check this web page (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/iainnoble1/spam.htm) and be sure that you have tried (or at least considered) the options for dealing with it before you make a final decision.

1. Years ago there was a post about getting a plan that was $3.95 a month or thereabouts. What number do I need to call to get that? What is the plan called, and what do I need to do to get it?
There is an official BYOA (Bring Your Own Access) plan (http://www.compuserve.com/byoa/byoa.htm) if you have another ISP that I believe is $9.95/month. But the only reason to sign up for something like that is to be able to continue your CompuServe mailbox, and you've said you're thinking about dropping CompuServe mail.

I have heard that there is also a $2.95/month BYOA plan, but that it is only offered to people who call to cancel their account, and it's not always offered even then. They may offer it to random cancellation callers, or there may be some unspecified selection criteria that they use to decide who to offer it to, I don't know.

2. What am I giving up if I dump CI$ entirely?
Basically, only your e-mail address, though I will concede that is no small thing, especially if you have a large contact list. When I switched mine, I did just as you have suggested -- continued to use CompuServe during a transition period until I was satisfied that all of my regular contacts had switched to the new address. It's not as traumatic as you might think.

I do still miss using TAPCIS for e-mail, because nothing I have found organizes mail quite as conveniently as TAPCIS. But as much as it pains me to say it, TAPCIS is a generation behind the e-mail curve, and its limitations are only going to become more and more a liability with time.

You don't need a CompuServe account to be able to access the CompuServe forums. You can go in via any ISP, you only need to register an AOL screen name. You don't need an AOL account for this; if you use AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), you can use your AIM screen name. A free AOL e-mail address (http://mail.aol.com) might well qualify, too, but I don't know that for sure.

Also, you don't need CompuServe to get dial-up access. Earthlink offers dial-up access, and I'm sure there are others who do as well.

--Lindsey

[davidh]

Any screen name, AIM, CSIM, AOL, Netscape, etc. should let one post to Compuserve/Netscape/Prospero forums.

Both AIM and AOL provide free email addresses. Both AIM and AOL email can be accessed by web or by IMAP capable email programs such as Thunderbird. I think both also give 100MB free blog space and AOL free ID also give 100MB free web site space.

Google free hosting for small business or personal is probably better than AOL web sites since Google hosted sites don't have banner ads. However AOL web sites can be maintained with secure FTP but I think Google does not allow FTP (for free web sites anyway). Google gives you up to 25 email accounts (2GB ea. with POP3 access) free on your own domain. You pay for the domain (from $0 to about $10/year depending on registrar).

Many (or most) AOL specific services are available with AOL ID and generic browser only (no AOL software required).

Some (or many?) broadband ISP's include limited free dial up hours (e.g. 20hrs. per mo. with Verizon).

Netzero still provides 10 hrs free dial up per month.

DH

[Dodi Schultz]

Believe it or not, CompuServe DOES have spam filters. I'm told that those using other ISPs get considerably more spam than I do; I probably get a dozen or two a day, tops, lately.
CIS is my sole ISP. I have the unlimited-time $9.95 per month plan. And I can use TAPCIS, as well as pick up messages at Mail2Web.

Yes, it's limited to dial-up, the only drawback. But hey, I'm not in that huge a hurry.

Yet.

--DS

[heinz57g]

i supervise (not all mine) about 60 domains, with numerous email accounts on them. take
for example those registered on GoDaddy and MyDomain, some of the largest in the world.
spam and scams and attacks are, per account, at least double that of what i get on the
5 CIS accounts i can check constantly, sometimes considerably higher. it comes and goes
in waves, a top of 500 a day on a single account does happen. then follow two days with ten.

yes, CIS does have spam filters, and they work reasonably well. problem with them is they are
invisible, and not user-adjustable, so many think they are just not there.

another point above: dialup is mentioned as being available with other providers. i was not
doubting that, but check the number of nodes, and also, i was emphasizing '' ... dial-up accces
... as good as worldwide ... '', which, admittedly, might not be of any value to many of you.

greetings - heinz -

[davidh]

CIS is my sole ISP. I have the unlimited-time $9.95 per month plan.

It used to be $24.95 unlimited, $9.95 bring your own access (BYOA), $9.95 5hrs included, $2.95 1hr+payasyougo (and maybe $4.95 "lite" 3 hrs included). If the price plans haven't changed, then maybe your Internet access is included in your cable TV or in your local+longdistance telephone bill or do you get a sysop account?

DH

[davidh]

but check the number of nodes, and also, i was emphasizing '' ... dial-up accces
... as good as worldwide ... '', which, admittedly, might not be of any value to many of you.

I went to an internet cafe about 7 years ago and paid $1 USD for 15 minutes. Then about 3 years ago I went to another one and they wanted $12 USD for one hour or any part thereof. So I drove to the local library and had to wait about 5 or 10 minutes to get a computer seat for free. I had to pay a little to print some pages, but very little. I've never been to an Internet cafe outside the USA.

DH

[dgermann]

Wow!

Thank you all for the wealth of experience you bring!

I can see the value of dialup as a backup. Actually had to use that a couple years ago. But nothing recently.

I hate to give up the e-mail address I have had for years. There is some sort of cachet to having all those numbers in your address, yes? ;)

But having spent close to 60 hours trying to figure out how to get Evolution or Thunderbird to connect to CIS and then finding out from the gurus on their forums that the problem is that CIS does not have enough servers/nodes/or whatever they need to service POP3 accounts, that soured me. And I wonder if they will not make the efforts to improve access now, what will it be a few years from now? As it is, I get calls from people who say I just sent you something, take a look..., and then I find it does not come in for a couple of hours (I have my client set to make a mail run every 9 minutes), that is not good. Or I have to keep hitting the go get my mail button repeatedly, which I suspect might be considered abusive.

Lindsey, saying it is not as big a pain as it might be gives me hope.

Dan, so with the $2.95 plan, do I still have the dialup available? It sounds like that is what you are saying.

David, I don't understand why I would want to use HMI during a changeover. I think what I have is a very old version of the CIS proprietary software on one computer, I thought version 3.x. Can't you do most of what is necessary via the Web somehow?

Dodi! Haven't "seen" you around in ages!

Heinz--same goes for you.

Thanks everyone. Great conversation!

[davidh]

David, I don't understand why I would want to use HMI during a changeover. I think what I have is a very old version of the CIS proprietary software on one computer, I thought version 3.x. Can't you do most of what is necessary via the Web somehow?


Doug,

I don't know if you still use TAPCIS (HMI only) or not. For example, at a minimum of one minute for a single run of TAPCIS, if you checked mail twice a day, that (e.g. 2 times 31 = 62 mins in March) would use up the 1 free hour one gets with the $2.95 pay as you go plan. Therefore, for one who is still using TAPCIS during a transition changeover period, the "lite" $4.95 plan (if it exists) with 3 free hours might be preferable, depending on amount of TAPCIS usage.

However, if you no longer use TAPCIS to check mail, then you would only have occasion to use HMI to do such things as change your passwords or check on minutes used, etc. In such a case the $2.95 pay as you go should be adequate. Pay as you go also supports dial up but you would likely exceed the 1 free hour, e.g. even dialing in from airport, hotel, etc. I think additional hours were $2.50 when I was on pay as you go a short time before dropping CIS 100%.

DH

[Dan in Saint Louis]

Dan, so with the $2.95 plan, do I still have the dialup available?I believe David is right, it does include one hour. By the time I got that far I already had DSL so I never noticed.

[davidh]

BTW, this is probably not a big security issue compared to many others currently affecting Internet users, but I believe that both Compuserve *and* POP3 passwords are transmitted "in the clear". I think that Compuserve invented Virtual Key to avoid this problem, however I doubt that Virtual Key is used much anymore.

I think that using a POP3 provider (such as Google) that offers secure (SSL) POP3 may offer some additional protection in this matter. The downside of using SSL with POP3 is that some web mail services may or may not support SSL to fetch your POP3 from other third party POP3 services (e.g. I think the AIM IM program only can *check* for the presence of new mail with non-SSL (original plain old) POP3 providers).

DH

[Lindsey]

I don't know if you still use TAPCIS (HMI only) or not.
TAPCIS will do ASCIIMAIL, assuming CompuServe still offers it, but that's not to say I would recommend anyone use it. The ASCII side started getting unreliable some years ago, and it doesn't handle multi-part messages well even when it's otherwise working OK.

--Lindsey

[Dodi Schultz]

It used to be $24.95 unlimited, $9.95 bring your own access (BYOA), $9.95 5hrs included, $2.95 1hr+payasyougo (and maybe $4.95 "lite" 3 hrs included). If the price plans haven't changed, then maybe your Internet access is included in your cable TV or in your local+longdistance telephone bill or do you get a sysop account?

DH

No, my Internet access isn't via cable; it's dial-up, which gets me to one of the three New York City CIS nodes. No, I don't have a sysop account (never did, even as a CIS sysop until 2004; I don't hang on any of the CIS forums since the Big Format Change). Yes, a lot of people still have the $24.95 unlimited or $9.95 for five hours, but you can get the unlimited for the lower price if you ask for it; I switched something over a year ago. My CompuServe fee is billed separately to a credit card.

--DS

[davidh]

Yes, a lot of people still have the $24.95 unlimited or $9.95 for five hours, but you can get the unlimited for the lower price if you ask for it; I switched something over a year ago.

Dodi,
Thanks for the info. $9.95 unlimited is probably a fair price considering that AOL unlimited dial-up is now $9.95, and isp.netscape.com (also AOL) is also still $9.95, I think.

I think Doug mentioned that he was having problems using POP3 to access his Classic Compuserve email. Perhaps HMI access of Classic Compuserve email is still adequately reliable?

I've had Earthlink dial up for almost 2 years now. It has been adequate up to now, but I think performance for streaming audio has deteriorated to the point where I might look for something else. But it might be my Verizon land line phone service too causing the problem too.

DH

[Dodi Schultz]

David, my dialup access to HMI mail works fine, but remember that I'm in New York and have a choice of three different CIS phone numbers; those in other locations may be up the proverbial creek if their single node fails (and nodes DO sometimes fail). Indeed, just a little while ago I was having what Windows seemed to think was a "network problem"; I got offline and dialed back up using one of the other numbers and had no further difficulties (here I am!).

I also sometimes use POP3 at Mail2Web if I happen to be tooling around the Web and need to check my messages.

--DS

[davidh]

David, my dialup access to HMI mail works fine, but remember that I'm in New York and have a choice of three different CIS phone numbers; those in other locations may be up the proverbial creek if their single node fails (and nodes DO sometimes fail).


You're right. Nodes do fail. I have several numbers I can dial to connect to Earthlink in the Tampa Bay area. But last year they ALL went down for between 24 and 48 hours one time. I keep my free Netzero dial-up account for back up for those situations. I think they throttle the bandwidth on free Netzero accounts, down to even lower than normal dial up speeds, but it's still better than having to wait 24 hours.

DH

[Mike]

But having spent close to 60 hours trying to figure out how to get Evolution or Thunderbird to connect to CIS and then finding out from the gurus on their forums that the problem is that CIS does not have enough servers/nodes/or whatever they need to service POP3 accounts, that soured me.
What gurus have told you that? Have you asked for help in the Classic CompuServe Support Forum (http://community.compuserve.com/cssoftware)?

[Mike]

BTW, this is probably not a big security issue compared to many others currently affecting Internet users, but I believe that both Compuserve *and* POP3 passwords are transmitted "in the clear". I think that Compuserve invented Virtual Key to avoid this problem, however I doubt that Virtual Key is used much anymore.
However, the password used to retrieve CompuServe POP3 email is not the same password used to log into CompuServe. One must get a special "email only" password for use with POP3 email.

[ktinkel]

I think Doug mentioned that he was having problems using POP3 to access his Classic Compuserve email. Perhaps HMI access of Classic Compuserve email is still adequately reliable?I use POP3 with CompuServe mail, both with CIM (though rarely these days) and with Eudora set up to retrieve that mail along with non-CIS e-mail. It even works with my cable broadband.

It seems to be more reliable than some others; I have one e-mail on a GoDaddy site, and it has problems at least half a dozen times a week.

I get a lot of spam on CIS, however. If I hadn’t had the address for close to 20 years, I would give it up, but it is linked to articles I have published. And every so often an old friend thinks to use it as well.

It was a little tricky to set up, but I got the information from the old CIS E-mail forum, and I bet the PDF is still around over there.

[Peter Creasey]

CIS does not have enough servers/nodes/or whatever they need to service POP3 accounts

Doug, If you're talking about sufficient servers to handle email processing, then my experience for a VERY long time is that CIS has plenty of resources to handle email input/output.

I still use my Classic CIS account as my primary email account and have been generally pleased with the ongoing service.

[Peter Creasey]

It seems to be more reliable than some others

Kathleen, My experiences with CIS email mirror yours. For a VERY long time I've been using my BYOA account to access my email via broadband connections. I hope the reliability of CIS email handling continue to be as excellent as it has been.

You mention spam. I get a lot more spam in secondary email accounts I have, particularly my gmail account.

[ktinkel]

You mention spam. I get a lot more spam in secondary email accounts I have, particularly my gmail account.I keep seeing these opposed views — that CIS mail has lots of spam or very little. I can only guess that those of use who get the spam are on a different server or something.

Or maybe it is just that really old CIS addresses garner a lot of spam because they have been around so long.

[Judy G. Russell]

Or maybe it is just that really old CIS addresses garner a lot of spam because they have been around so long.I think this is part of it, plus the old numerical combinations were just so easy to figure out.

[earler]

You don't need to figure out the numerical combinations of CompuServe uid's, other than to take into consideration they are octal based. Since spam has costless to send, you will reach everyone with a valid address.

[Peter Creasey]

Or maybe it is just that really old CIS addresses garner a lot of spam because they have been around so long.

Kathleen, My CIS Classic address is VERY old. Perhaps you're right, but it just doesn't seem to be true in cases I've seen (which aren't very many).

[Judy G. Russell]

You don't need to figure out the numerical combinations of CompuServe uid's, other than to take into consideration they are octal based.That -- plus the fact that there are both the 7xxxx and 1xxxxx numbers -- is what I meant by "figure out"!

[davidh]

I keep seeing these opposed views — that CIS mail has lots of spam or very little. I can only guess that those of use who get the spam are on a different server or something.

Or maybe it is just that really old CIS addresses garner a lot of spam because they have been around so long.

Perhaps it also depends on whether one has been unlucky enough to have the computer of one of one's correspondents attacked by an email worm which has harvested the email addresses in that computer's address book(s) and uploaded them to a spammer's computers.

Also if the spam is coming to one's vanity/personalized CIS address (as opposed to one's numeric CIS address) then it may depend on how probable one's personalized address is in the possible universe of personalized addresses. For example, if one has numeric digits scattered in the middle of alpha names (as opposed to numbers merely at the end of the name) then that may be a rather uncommon type of ID that would be less likely to be generated by the ID generating algorithm of the spammer software.

DH

[dgermann]

Mike, Peter, David--

Well, the gurus at Compuserve Classic and Hardware forums told me that. I spent probably easily 30 or 40 hours (well it was not easy!) trying to figure out why it takes an average of 10 runs to make any connection at all to CIS POP3 servers, plus one replaced router and lots of conversations here, as well. The ultimate result was that others were having the same problems and the answer was that CIS would not dedicate enough servers or whatever is necessary on their end to allow connections. I can connect every time to Comcast.

You can check out the threads on all three forums and troubleshoot it further if you like; it is easier for me to drop the troublesome part, CIS.

Thanks for your thoughts on this matter, and it is good you have good connections. It just does not work well for me.

Thanks!

[davidh]

Just wondering if the POP3 results would be better when POPping CIS POP3 mail into some webmail service such as Yahoo, Google, mail2web, etc. as opposed to downloading it directly to your computer from CIS via your current broadband ISP. Perhaps you've already tried this and have some results.

DH

FWIW, some obsolete versions of MS Outlook and MS Exchange can download Classic Compuserve email via one (or more? which one?) of the Compuserve mail protocols, with an appropriate add on or plug in from Compuserve (to avoid POP3). However, this is almost certainly merely an academic proposal, who would use MS software unless there were no other choices?

DH

[ktinkel]

Also if the spam is coming to one's vanity/personalized CIS address (as opposed to one's numeric CIS address) then it may depend on how probable one's personalized address is in the possible universe of personalized addresses. A lot of it comes to my ID number, and if the mail list isn’t hidden, it appears that it is addressed to a large range of numbers before and after mine.

[Judy G. Russell]

A lot of it comes to my ID number, and if the mail list isn’t hidden, it appears that it is addressed to a large range of numbers before and after mine.That was certainly my experience (and my reason for dumping CS... well, one of my reasons at any rate).

[fhaber]

Rumor is that you'll have to threaten to quit, or ask to speak to a supervisor, or both. It all seems to depend on the quotas of the week that the phone serfs^H^H agents must meet, or on the weather in Bangalore.

I lucked out this week. I finally cancelled 72115, 232, just by being patient and firm, and listening to a couple of short scripts. (I was already paying $3.) The gentleman's English was excellent, and his every move was reasonable. No doubt he'll be fired next week.

25 years on that PPN.

[Judy G. Russell]

The gentleman's English was excellent, and his every move was reasonable. No doubt he'll be fired next week.ROFL!!! (Sad, but true.)

[dgermann]

David--

Yes, getting CIS mail through Yahoo and mail2web works reasonably well, but then again it is not on my computer. Meaning I cannot store it to refer to it later. It is also more cumbersome to use those interfaces in my experience.

Not sure if Evolution might have some sort of CIS interface--have not looked. Just poked around a little in Google and found nothing. I'm running under Linux, so MS is not an option.

Thanks, David!

[davidh]

David--

Yes, getting CIS mail through Yahoo and mail2web works reasonably well, but then again it is not on my computer. Meaning I cannot store it to refer to it later. It is also more cumbersome to use those interfaces in my experience.

Not sure if Evolution might have some sort of CIS interface--have not looked. Just poked around a little in Google and found nothing. I'm running under Linux, so MS is not an option.

Thanks, David!

Here's an experiment you might want to try (assuming that it would be acceptable for your purposes to have a permanent mail address at Google, if you have your own domain, you can keep the same registrar but host site and email for free on Google too):

1. get a Google mail account free
2. set it up to pop your CIS mail
3. go to Google mail with browser and pop your CIS mail into Gmail
4. use your LINUX email program to pop your Gmail with secure POP3
5. see whether the mail pop'd from Gmail also includes your CIS mail (already pop'd into Gmail)
6. if 1 thru 5 work ok, then make a macro to force your browser to pop CIS mail
7. run the macro from 6 BEFORE you do your normal Gmail mail-run (at least, when you desire to DL CIS mail

I'm pretty sure that all of these should work ok, except maybe for #5 (and I don't know a macro program suitable for LINUX and whatever browser you use on LINUX).

DH

[Judy G. Russell]

Yes, getting CIS mail through Yahoo and mail2web works reasonably well, but then again it is not on my computer. Meaning I cannot store it to refer to it later. It is also more cumbersome to use those interfaces in my experience.If you can get your CS mail through mail2web, then you can get it with any POP mail program. Evolution, I know, is full-featured, and there's no reason why you can't set it up to retrieve the CS mail as popmail. If you need help with the settings, I'm sure someone here can help, or someone in the classic support forum back on Compuserve.

[dgermann]

Judy--

Yup, spent days and weeks on this problem with CIS Classic and Hardware forums about 6 months or a year ago. They finally threw up their hands and one guru posted that CIS does not have enough capacity to handle all the POP3 traffic. I took that to mean that the problem is on the CIS side. So I will likely go elsewhere.

David--

Great idea! I will have to test it out. I am not sure about macros in Evolution, so will have to study that a bit. Thanks for the idea, David!

[davidh]

Great idea! I will have to test it out. I am not sure about macros in Evolution, so will have to study that a bit. Thanks for the idea, David!
If you want to try these experiments, the macro program needed would be one of two kinds:

1. A macro program specifically adapted to your browser (e.g. Firefox or Opera, both of which have build that will run on LINUX, I think. Whether the macro program would be an add-on or not, I don't know. I think Opera has built-in macro capability, at least in Windows version.)

2. A macro program generally adapted to the operating system and GUI you are using (e.g. Gnome or KDE for LINUX?) that can make and run keyboard macros in any GUI (or text based?) program.

Because the purpose of the macro would be to go to the webmail site (e.g. Google) and refresh/POP the third party email (e.g. CIS).

OTOH, if you are willing to keep yourself permanently signed in to your webmail account *and* keep your browser running continuously, then it might take only a couple clicks to do the task that you would want the macro to do, and therefore it might be advisable to skip the macro idea and just click the mouse a couple times to pop CIS mail into whatever webmail (e.g. Google).

DH

[Judy G. Russell]

So I will likely go elsewhere.I hear you. I did that myself a loooong time ago.

[dgermann]

Judy--

Thanks!

David--

Have looked and Evolution does not seem to have any plugins that do that kind of thing.

Will need to look for gnome generally, or failing that, perhaps something in a linux command. Perhaps even wget or something of that nature? Anyway, I will do some more digging.

Thanks for the new direction, David!

[Lindsey]

They finally threw up their hands and one guru posted that CIS does not have enough capacity to handle all the POP3 traffic.
I am quite sure that nobody from Classic Support ever said that, and I doubt that anyone from PC Hardware could speak from first-hand knowledge.

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

They finally threw up their hands and one guru posted that CIS does not have enough capacity to handle all the POP3 traffic. I took that to mean that the problem is on the CIS side.
OK, I went back and looked up the thread on Classic Support. This was back in August. It was quite a long thread, and by the end of it, you were beginning to suspect that the problem might be your Linksys WRT54G router, which had been at version 5 and then upgraded to version 6 in the course of working on the problem.

As it turns out, you were right: the problem is with your router, or more precisely, perhaps, an incompatibility between your router at version 5 and later and CompuServe. See this message (http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?msg=43796.43&nav=messages&webtag=ws-cssoftware) from last December.

But nothing to do with capacity on CompuServe's POP3 servers.

--Lindsey

[davidh]

Have looked and Evolution does not seem to have any plugins that do that kind of thing.

Will need to look for gnome generally, or failing that, perhaps something in a linux command. Perhaps even wget or something of that nature? Anyway, I will do some more digging.

Thanks for the new direction, David!

The function that would merit any kind of automation would not be in your email program (such as in Evolution), but instead in your browser. Namely, the requesting of a pop-ing *and* pop-able web mail (web application on the server side) to fetch third party pop email into the folders and/or message base of the web mail web application.

If you are using Firefox on LINUX then it might be worth looking at this extension:

Macros for Firefox by iOpus

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3863

I have never used this macro facility and have not even read the full description of it, but it looks promising. There may even be other such FF extensions that are better for all I know.

As I mentioned, a macro facility might even be overkill, depending on your preferences. Since as I mentioned, if you keep your browser running and your compuserve pop3 ID and pop3 password "logged in", i.e. in your browser cookies, then all you probably need to do is click on a toolbar icon you make to act as a shortcut to your webmail (e.g. Gmail) inbox and then merely another click to pop mail from the third party mail server (e.g. CIS).

Perhaps it would hardly be worth learning how to use whatever macro program merely to reduce the number of clicks needed by a single click?

Whether the real underlying problem is in your router or in CIS, I have no idea. But if Gmail can pop your CIS mail more reliably than anything you've tried so far, then it may be a satisfactory workaround as opposed to fussing around more with your router? At least provided that Evolution can support secure POP3 of pop mail from Gmail and provided that the pop3-ing from Gmail DOES include whatever CIS has recently been freshly pop'd from CIS into Gmail (assuming Gmail is the one you try).

I don't know anything about Evolution, but I know that Thunderbird supports secure pop3 (e.g. needed for pop3 Gmail) *and* IMAP. I prefer Gmail over AOL or AIM mail. But I mention IMAP only in case AOL and AIM web mail (both needing IMAP if you want OLR functionality, i.e. local storage) also support pop-ing of 3rd party pop3 (e.g. CIS)? I use dial up and find Gmail web mail significantly faster than AOL/AIM web mail.

DH

[earler]

The problem with a wrt54g only concerns a series that used a cheaper cpu. All earlier series were fine, as a later one that uses the first cpu once again. This problem concerns primarily voip, by the way.

[Lindsey]

The problem with a wrt54g only concerns a series that used a cheaper cpu. All earlier series were fine, as a later one that uses the first cpu once again. This problem concerns primarily voip, by the way.
The connection with the router was one uncovered by a group of users on the Classic Support forum who all were experiencing the same problem and noticed that all of them had the same router, versions 5 and above. Beyond that, I don't know any details.

--Lindsey

[dgermann]

Lindsey--

Thanks for finding that other thread.

Yes, my saga was in August. The particular place where Doug Yriart says CIS seems to be the culprit is http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=12&nav=messages&webtag=ws-pchardware&tid=162567]here (http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=12&nav=messages&webtag=ws-pchardware&tid=162567). Note posts 28, 33 and 38. Doug says
The problem lies in the CIS network and how CIS does load balancing. It's been a problem ever since CompuServe first exposed it's mail servers to the Internet and opened up to POP3 in addition to its proprietary old mail system.

The load balancing servers aren't always successful in directing your connection to an available host inside the network. My suspicion for various informal tests over the year is that the CIS internal network is overly congested.

I can duplicate Doug's poor connection record with mail clients on Linux, OS X and Windows XP. I strongly doubt that his router is defective.

I have toyed with the idea of trying another router, but I do not relish the idea of all the pain I had in installing this one! :(

Thanks, Lindsey!

And David, he is seconding your suggestion to try gmail! :)

[Lindsey]

Odd that the problem that was reported on Classic Support only occurred with one specific type of router, and went away when the members reporting it changed routers or versions. But good luck with whatever you decide to do!

--Lindsey

[davidh]

And David, he is seconding your suggestion to try gmail! :)

FYI: Google mail has an HTML-ONLY OPTION for reading and posting Google webmail. This was originally implemented to support old web browsers that might have no support or obsolete support for javascript. However since email can come from almost any malevolent source, it might in some cases be well to read webmail with javascript turned off completely in one's browser (even in non MS-IE browsers and in non MS OS's, such as Firefox on LINUX), for security. i.e. another possible "plus" for Gmail.

DH

[Mike]

... where Doug Yriart says CIS seems to be the culprit...
And Doug Y does not speak for CompuServe.