It has been ages since I dealt with POP3, my partners dad is terrible with computers so I get roped in. He has his email to his home computer and wants to config up his Android device to have his email come through that as well. Does POP3 support two devices? OR does it have to be one or the other? I glanced around the xtra.co.nz/help section and found it to be lacking, much like their phone support.
enozkeeg: It has been ages since I dealt with POP3, my partners dad is terrible with computers so I get roped in. He has his email to his home computer and wants to config up his Android device to have his email come through that as well. Does POP3 support two devices? OR does it have to be one or the other? I glanced around the xtra.co.nz/help section and found it to be lacking, much like their phone support.
If I remember correctly some applications let you configure whether or not to delete the messages off the host once they've downloaded, so it should be a matter of configuring that.
The standard way POP3 works if it will pick up the mail from the remote server and then delete it all so if you are using 2 machines you will get random emails on both devices but not the same.
BUT... A lot of POP3 clients have the "leave mail on server" option so it will download the messages and remember when it is up to. This will then work on 2 devices but if ether machine forgets where its up to you could see it re-downloading all the messages .
Better would be setting up IMAP Access on both devices and this is a lot better. You can have shared folders between devices (which you cannot have via POP) and its just a lot nicer.
POP3 sucks you have to configure the clients to leave the messages on the server and if you read a message on once client the your other clients won't know that message is read.
Also most NZ ISP's provide shoddy email service eg: poor spam filtering, no IMAP, no SSL/TLS on alternative port to 25.
If he has an Android best to make the switch a gmail account as his default address and ween him off the ISP email address:
1: Signup for a gmail account 2: In gmail settings setup the gmail mail fetcher to pull email in from the ISP address (in case people still send to it) into the gmail inbox 3: Over time change all your newsletter subscriptions to use the gmail address. 4: Enable IMAP access in Gmail settings 5: Send an email from the gmail account to all his contacts saying the gmail is his new email address 6: On the desktop use the web interface into gmail and/or an email client via IMAP (Thunderbird or Windows Live Mail aren't bad) 7: On the phone use the inbuilt gmail app
Eventually your xtra or ISP account won't receive any important email and you can the ditch the account.
Congratulations he will be free from ISP provided email, meaning it's easier to change ISP in the future
I've just gone through above process (after 16 yrs with Xtra.. tiring much!)
But if the suggestion is quickly filed into the 'toohard' bin and you want a quickfix, get the yahoo mail app for android. Works fine with xtra and uses IMAP functionality so only when you tell it to delete from server, it will. Or the android mail client can be configured to do the same manually (automatic always tries pop)
PS just in case someone ever comes across this. I friend was getting many "login denied" messages on his PC with his Xtra POP3 account. Turns out he was also checking this account on his iPhone and the iOS mail client doesn't release the connection. Only when we turned off the iPhone was the PC able to log in and get the mail.
Sweet! He took it into the shop he got it from they config'd it up in a flash - dunno what they did and don't care - Our (my) responsiblity is finished!
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