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Email On Both the Desktop and the Laptop?
RapterOfParadox asks: "I recently purchased a new laptop and have everything configured except for my e-mail. I've always liked having a single location where I know my e-mail is safe, secure and gets backed up automatically. If I've needed access to new messages then I use webmail, since I close down the email client when I leave the house. I'm currently using Outlook XP for my desktop and was thinking about using the same for my laptop. My only issue is that I'm a little weary about using only my laptop for storing e-mail, since it's a lot more likely to fail. I've been thinking about just synchronizing my Outlook data directories at login, or even using IMAP. Has anyone seen/bought/built an e-mail client that will allow me to have my main e-mail client on my desktop and then update my laptop e-mail client when ever I'm in range, or through a personal IMAP Server?"
It's not a big deal. I use IMAP at home, at work, and on my PDA. Everything works fine.
Get a Gmail account, redirect all your mail to it, and fetch it from Gmail with a pop client
I use IMAP for my email, the IMAP server is a commercial server in a data centre that is cared for by a team of full time administrators who back everything up for me and make sure it's all running ok. Takes the hassle out of it and means all your email is availiable wherever you are.
Call me simple, but I use outlook express and just copy off my .dbx files every once in a while. Any geek should be able to automate the copying of the files, and windows doesn't get all weird over the .dbx files like it does about open .pst files.
.dbx files.
Here's a trivial way to do it -
Create a script that you call to open OE. The script first makes a directory that includes a time/datestamp, then copies the contents of your mail identity directory to that folder. Then it opens OE just like usual.
Simple and effective. All you have to remember to do is delete the old folders before you run out of drive space. Sure it would take a while if you keep a ton of email around, but it's just a simple example of how to automate the backup of the
http://fastmail.fm/
I use it from my latop / desktop / web browser / Nokia 6600
etc. etc.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
leave a copy of the messages on the server and have both the workstation and laptop check them. set them to delete the messages after 7-10 days or whatever time period you think would be sufficient for both places to check the mail.
Get paid to code OSS
May be overly simplistic, but how about you set your laptop to simply leave messages on the server? When on the road, you can read your new mail - but the message remains on your server so when you connect from home you can still see those same messages. This obviously wouldn't help with sent items, but at least gets you messages at both locations so you don't have to worry about losing data if it is only stored on one machine. For my work e-mail - I have my office machine leave messages on the server for 7 days, at home it has no deletion rule. I can leave both online all the time but still get all messages at either location with backups being performed on the work machine.
Come on people! There is a protocol to take care of this, it exists in every major email program, and is offered by every major ISP. It's called IMAP, and does exactly what the poster requested, and doesn't require any more work than clicking a different protocol on a drop down menu.
What's next on ask slashdot? "I want to transfer web pages over an encrypted connection!"
Replies: Setup a cgi wrapper script to encrypt all traffic over `openssl`. Setup another daemon to manage public key exchange, and then write a Firefox extension to do the key exchange and decrypt on the fly!
From an Outlook Express user?
I use a combo of things to keep my mail in line. For my work and blog email I use IMAP since it's available. For my mailing lists I use gmail and pop it on my zaurus (running OpenBSD) via fetchmail, leaving messages on the server. This way gmail keeps a nice searchable archive for me, and thanks to procmail I have everything I decide to keep in folders on my zaurus. I can delete everything from my z if I want to and just keep items that are useful to me at the moment. I'm usually in a place where I can plug the z in and shell into it and use mutt from there (the cute little keyboard novelty wears off after about 10 minutes of reading mail). It might seem like extra work, but it's really convenient to have things on the pda so when I go I have the stuff in my pocket. Mutt handles my IMAP stuff well, and mstmtp is great for sending mail from multiple accounts (including gmail). After a while of hating the fact that I actually use 5 different email addresses, I've finally come to a point where it's managable. The best part is that I leave the pda fetching overnight so I can read the mail when I'm riding the subway to work in the morning.
Chaos is Divine *
If you are using POP there should be a box so that you don't delete your mail from the server after you download it. If you use IMAP this is the default. I don't see what the problem here is. You keep all your messages on the server and your client just checks to see what's there. Your computer be it laptop or desktop is not the place for e-mail to be stored, the server is. If your e-mail server is not backed up you have worse problems. If you're super worried, get gmail.
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Your IMAP suggestion is the way to go.
Here's the recipe:
use fetchmail to get your mail from all the mail accounts you might have,
use spamassassin to check your mail for spam,
use clamav to check for virusses (if you are on Windows, like you are),
use procmail to filter the mail to seperate folders,
set up imap so you can read the mail from any mailclient without removing it from the server,
install some kind of webmail so you can reach your mail from internet-kiosks and other places with browser-only access.
Finally, BACK IT UP! Bacula is quite good.
I know what the poster means, for a long time I did not have usefull mail on my laptop, I consider being able to view the mail I sent someone a crucial feature of email. Blame it on my isp, they dont offer an imap option. But recently when I was setting up a linux box for my website I installed an imap server for keeping my mail. For those that dont know imap differs from a pop server in that instead of the email client keeping all the mail on the client computer the imap server keeps the email on the server, so that any client can access the email. Bundled with fetchmail, to forward my old pop account to my new email at my domain, and Squirrell, a web mail client in case Im not on my own machine, its the perfect combo. Here is a link to a HOWTO. This guy set up his email system nearly identical to mine. Good Luck!
I have a similar setup with Office 2003.
My desktop is the "home base" for all of my email, but I connect my laptop daily to sync my exchange mailbox. Then when I'm on the road my mailbox is cached on the laptop.
I have a 500MB email quota, and backup older stuff to PST files on my desktop. Google Desktop makes that easy by storing a cache of the emails in its index.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Really easy, really simple. Just use remote desktop and connect back to your home machine. I have been doing this for years and works fantastic. Not to mention it's an easy way to bypass any corporate website blocking too..
I dunno, can it be done? Way to shoot for the moon!
Everyone is missing the most simple option, tell the client on the laptop never to delete messages on the server, so that way, even if you check your messages o nthe laptop durring the day you can still grab them on the desktop when you get home.
-=Hinkey=-
If it were me, I'd keep my mailbox on a USB drive and physically move it between each machine.
Maybe I'm still stuck in the 56K mindset (avoid using bandwidth at all costs) though.
[*] Leave copy of mail on server.
Delete after [ x ] days.
I prefer to just use IMAP and access it on the server. But if you really want to have it on the laptop without a net connection, look up the "cp" command under Unix. Yep, just copy the mail files to the laptop. Assumes you have control of the server, but that is a given in the question, so go to it!
Most email clients will let you specify a remote folder as a destination for your sent mail. I haven't had any problem doing it in Thunderbird.
nt
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
leave them on the server. My home machine grabs mail once a day( 1am ) and deletes it from the server. That way, when I am away from home, my lappy will catch the new mail, but my home machine will archive it. If by chance there the home machine catches an important message, its a trivial task to get at it.
The only problem I could see with this scheme is organizing sent mail. I rarely use the home machine for anything other than file server and backup tasks so this isnt a problem for me.
You had used a web client, keep doing it if you need piece of mind that your mail is where you know it should be. If you had given more info about 'the' mail server and who hosts it, if you have any quotas to live with, I might have more to say....
Sig Hansen?
I've been running IMAP for years and just finished writing my own variant of a webmail server in Perl. Just couldn't find what I wanted in PHP and this runs really fast.
But IMAP works great. This isn't new. It's overdue.
I have used nothing but a long stream of laptops since the mid 90's. Never owned a desktop until I bought one this fall. Originally I used Netscape for browsing and e-mail (v2.0 - v4), and later moved to Eudora (to avoid the perils of Outlook).
:)
With every new laptop purchase I transfer my mailboxes and data from Eudora to the new one. No problem there. My problem comes when I want to check e-mail across these two machines- Eudora obviously supports it, but I do not have IMAP available for my e-mail server.
What to do then? I may take the laptop and be on the road for several weeks, but I want all incoming and outgoing mail synchronized between it and my new desktop. Ideas other than "find a new e-mail provider" are appreciated.
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
When creating your email account in Outlook on your laptop configure it to leave messages on the server that way when your desktop goes to download the messages afterwards they are still housed on the server.
Note that, in accordance with a long tradition of posts pointing out spelling errors, this post has not been previewed in the hope that it will then contain at least one spelling error.
--
I know what you're thinking, but I am not a nut-bag. -- Millroy the Magician
OMFG! This Ask Slashdot is such a stereotypical Linux Fanbio question. While the question doesn't go so far as knocking Microsoft products, like most Slashdotters normally would, both the question and the answers indicate a total lack of knowledge of Microsoft products on Slashdotters parts.
The article does not specify what type of mail server he is connecting to and it could be inferred that he is using an ISP mailserver that provides POP3 or IMAP but, Exchange can't be ruled out either. Regardless, Outlook has provided the desired behavior for years via several different methods, depending on the mail server.
Outlook provides a caching mode that, in the case of Exchange or IMAP, leaves messages on the server and creates a cache of the mailbox on the local machine to improve performance and facilitate offline use. With POP3 servers Outlook allows for leaving the messages on the server even after downloading them to the client and you can even further specify an age at which to purge messages from the server. In any and all of these cases, the Outlook user can have any number of client machines accessing the same server mailbox and have them all synchronized and available for use offline doing nothing beyond simply using Outlook for the client.
What a concept! No Linux Fanboi could image that lowly Microsoft could ever have dreamed of such functionality. And yet, there it's been for all these years. Outlook, single handedly providing the features and functionality of half a dozen different Linux tools and hacks all in a simple and convenient package that just works, and logically to boot! Who'd have thunk it? No Thunderbird, plus special servers, plus scripts, plus song and dance, just Outlook. OMFG my head is about to explode!
they are fun.. I'm running one now for less than two months
outlook web access, remote desktop, outlook over http.. leave it at home, get it anywhere!
(remote desktop alone works wonders as well-- no purchase beyond XP pro on home machine necassary)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
all the mail clients would handle it correct. To retrieve messages from a POP3 account to several computers you simply have to configure your mail client with "Leave messages on server". Of course that way your mail account will overflow after some time and possibly get locked by the provider, therefore you also have to configure "Delete when locally deleted". These simple setting are all you need unfortunately Mozilla Thunderbird (the obvious choice for multiple different computers) can't do that since it can only "Delete when locally deleted _and_ moved to other folders". So a power user either can't use a POP3 account or can't use folders with TB, something which sounds ridiculous. O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Setup a local IMAP server at home. Have a local POP client collect your mail for you at the house, then VPN or SSH+port forward back home to read it.
If you use windows, Mercury32 works great. If you use *nix, there are TONS of options.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just a random note I will bury at the bottom of the page - your laptop doesn't have to be 'more likely to fail.'
Assuming it survives the infant mortality period (first 30 days or so) there is going to be a single point of failure : hard drive. Granted the CPU fan could fail and smoke your CPU, but that is about as likely on a laptop as on a desktop - but I'm concentrating on the 'more likely' aspects.
So your laptop is going to last until the hard drive fails. Want the laptop to last longer, figure out why the hard drives fail, and address it.
What is the key difference between the use pattern in hard drives between laptops and desktops? People don't move desktops around while they are running, but don't think twice about yaw'ing a laptop all around while it is on. A hard drive is little more than an expensive gyroscope spinning at 7,200rpm. Gyroscopes resist yaw'ing, and this resistance manifests itself in the form of pressure at the load bearing points. Aww hell, I have a headache and don't feel like going into the physics, but safe it to say that if you put your laptop on a firm surface before turning it on and leave it there unmoved until you turn it off (not picking it up and moving it around, or resting it on your legs in bed) it will last a LOT longer.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Tell both machines to leave copies, and delete after two days. That way, both get everything, but the mailbox doesn't clog up.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I switched from desktop email software (Outlook Express) to gmail for exactly this reason. Can access same inbox from work, home, mobile phone and laptop, and even internet cafe should I want to g
Almost every other email program in existance uses a portable mail format - use one of those and not just the free add-on that came with MS Windows or the more complicated free add-on that came with MS Office.
IMAP on your own server.
POP3 clients that can "leave mail on server".
Something like gmail (if you trust them to keep your mail safe and never disappear)
A service like GoToMyPC.
There's about a million ways to do what you're looking to do. It's almost too easy.
+++OK ATH
I've recommended this type of setup for many people over the last few years. If your mail host also supports webmail, you get the added bonus of access via web.
I currently use Courier-IMAP on my mailserver and offlineimap to synchronize my linux desktop machine with the imap server. I then use a version of pine I patched to work with Maildir instead of Mbox, and also have squirrelmail running on the mailserver for web based access. On my Windows machine, I use Outlook with IMAP and everything stays magically in sync. With offlineimap, I sync my inbox, sent-mail, and a few other commonly used folders every 5 minutes and the rest of them every hour. It works well.