Help with email solution

[clv101]

Here’s the deal, have a number of email accounts, lets call them:

email01 – POP3 with a rubbish webmail system, had it a long time, gets around 20 spam mails a day but also maybe 1-2 real mails I care about.
email02 – POP3 with pretty good webmail system, this is my main email, using my ISPs servers and associated with my domain name so I can pick up mail sent to [email protected]. It reseives maybe 30 spam mails a day but the ISP has a really good spam filter so these don’t end up in my inbox, but instead can be checked through the webmail system.
email03 – a gmail account that I hardly really use at all.

And a number of devices:

Vista Desktop – using Outlook 2003
Leopard Desktop
Tiger Macbook
Nokia E61i

Objectives – to be able to:

• Receive and send email from all of those four devices.
• To maintain a record of all received and sent emails accessible on the three computers.

What I do at the moment is maintain a comprehensive mail store on the Vista/Outlook box. When using the Leopard or Tiger machines I only use email02 and use the webmail system (so mail stays on the ISP servers) with a BCC to myself when sending. When I eventually get back to the Vista/Outlook machine I download all the mail from the ISP and manually move all the sent mails I’ve received form myself as BCC into the Sent folder. This keeps everything up to date on the PC however it has the following problem:

The Leopard/Tiger machines don’t have a store of historic received or sent email. They are only using webmail from the ISPs servers, which gets downloaded onto the PC ~every day, so often I can’t reply as I need to refer to an older message.

So – what should I do? I want to keep a comprehensive off line copy on the Vista/Outlook machine. I’m thinking gmail might be the solution I’m looking for as it would be a way of keeping everything accessible from all devices.

Can gmail be used with POP3/Outlook to download everything (sent and received) whilst leaving everything on the gmail servers and therefore accessible from the other machines?

How reliable is gmail? Long term prognosis? Can I use gmail to manage my existing domain name – so I can keep using the same address?

Apologies for the ramble!

 

[Fr0dders]

Can gmail be used with POP3/Outlook to download everything (sent and received) whilst leaving everything on the gmail servers and therefore accessible from the other machines?

How reliable is gmail? Long term prognosis? Can I use gmail to manage my existing domain name – so I can keep using the same address?

Gmail can.

Only slight snag is that it doesnt associate any sent e-mail sent from the webmail system properly. But you can filter that easy as it has your gmail address in the "sender" field.

Gmail is very reliable, and you can forward your domain e-mail to your gmail and just receive everything to the gmail.

And crucially, anything you receive in outlook is still available on the web, so you can have a simultaneous record in outlook and on the web of all e-mails.

 

[clv101]

I'm reading into Gmail - it looks good. I could use Fetcher to collect my existing POP3 mail, I can use IMAP clients or the web interface on the Macs... tempting.

 

[Fr0dders]

only slight problem with it, is that its a free service

its not paid for, as such the proposition of them being able to turn round and say "sorry we've lost all your e-mails" will have to be considered.

Allthough unlikely, it shouldnt be relied upon for important business stuff.

 

[clv101]

That's true... but I wouldn't ever plan to leave many days worth on the server without taking a local backup. Also - my paid for ISP mail server still managed to lose a load of mail last year!

 

[Fr0dders]

i once heard a horror story about a small business who rather than using a proper e-mail system just got people to sign up for a gmail account

didnt have any of it locally and lot his account, taking his entire customer contact database with it.

If you've got a rigid local backup, and arent leaving more than a weeks worth of data (as opposing to having it as a location of all e-mails ever) then it sounds like an ideal use.