helo Retiarius Zogreso -
basically you could use *any* "best offer" Internet Service Provider
(ISP), as most of them (AOL is an exception) use standard connectivity
(PPP, point to point) protocols and, for their mail servers, POP3 and
SMTP. Only make sure to get a *local* dial-in point to the NetAccess
Provider" (who is a different beast often).
With that you can use any of a number of mail "client" DOS applications,
like Nettamer Netmail Pro, or (all these others need a separate dialler
and packet driver set up beforehand) Pegasus, Crosspoint, POPMail,
DOS-Pine, etc. - lost of good mailers for DOS around !
The problem is that most of the ISPs that make big publicity will send
you a CD filled with rubbish, and printed on it, "just play and plug
into the net", or some other nonsence like that. And if you call them,
the salespeople you get to most probably wouldn't even be able to tell
you the DNS addresses to use, the very name of their mailserver, etc.
(which you would use to set up the progs.), most would tell you even
- blatantly wrong - it would be "impossible" to connect with DOS.
One has to stubbornly try to get through to one of the *real*
"techies" of these "services", if there are any (most "customer
service" people at best know on which box on what Window$ screen they
have to click); those who know better will hopefully do what they're
hired for, that is sell the company's offer of standardised
connectivity.
There's one hitch though, probably not (yet) for you (Burlington is USA,
I presume) - try to avoid a mailserver which is too "far" away, in terms
of net hops. With the rapid clogging of the net (thanks to all the
pixel stuff, and net-phone will kill net speed for good), mail traffic
can become a pain in the sitting region: quite a number of ISPs over
here in Europa are already paper-only offices, profiting from
differential advantages of server leasing just somewhere, and a deal
with some NAP about sharing inter-connectivity rates; the physical
machine then, where your mail is stored, might be far away and may have
to do some (inter-)continental travelling, through many net nodes,
underdimensioned uplinks and overcharged backbones, and accross all
respective regional traffic peaks. Case of my ISP which has its
mailserver in Latin-America; both big NAPs where I can dial in here in
the middle of Western Europa gain from those painstaking slow transfers
too (they get their cut from the minutes fee I have to pay the
telco - no flat rates here wide and far.)
For the same reasons though, DOS and text-based applications are
technologically more avanced - communication (software) is faster,
output less bloated, hence less to transport over the net; it's simply
more efficient for most purposes. And that you can use it with
vintage 'puters makes it even a bit more democratic.
// Heimo Claasen // <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> // Brussels 1999-05-
HomePage of ReRead - and much to read ==> http://www.inti.be/hammer
Member,
People's Committee for Democratically Organizing the System
(PC-DOS)
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