Have your computer questions answered here! Search the PC Doctor archive or submit a question of your own at info@athollibrary.org
Dear PC Doctor:
I can access my email from home by clicking on the icon that the Internet company person set up on my computer. My computer broke the other day and I wanted to use someone else’s computer and found I had no idea how to get to my email. I kept typing in my email address on the address line and nothing happened. What’s up?
Jack
Dear Jack:
When your Internet Service Provider (or ISP) sets up your system, they usually install the software for their email service on your computer and put in your user name and password. You simply click on the desktop icon and your email pops up. However, it’s important that you know what your user name and password are because if you want to access your email elsewhere whether at a friend’s, the library or a hotel, should you be on vacation, you will need to enter those manually. The computer you are at away from home will not have the advantage of having your ISP’s personalized software setup installed. If you don’t know what your user name and password are, call your Internet provider and ask them.
To access your email at another location, you need to know the web page of your ISP. Let’s take this example of an imaginary email address - anybody@athollibrary.org. To access this away from home, just remove the username (anybody) and the @ sign and put a www. in front of it – thus you have www.athollibrary.org. Type that web address (NOT your email address) into the address field of your Internet browser (be it Netscape or Internet Explorer) and hit enter. Your ISP’s web page should appear and now you have to scout around for a link that lets you access email. There may be a box that says ‘Email’ or underlined links such as ‘connect to your email’ or ‘My Email’ or any other configuration that indicates you can log onto your email account. Click there and you will prompted to enter your user name and your password (see, I told you it would come in handy to know those!). When you ‘log in’ it should take you to your inbox.
Now another important thing to remember is that you may have Microsoft Outlook configured on your personal computer at home to handle your email. This means that the interface or ‘view’ that your email inbox takes may be different at your away location as opposed to your home as you are looking directly at your inbox without the ‘third party’ interpretation of Outlook. What that means is that if you want to keep or move your email to the folders that you may use in Outlook, you will have to leave them in your inbox until you can open them at home on your own computer. Once you delete from your email server they are gone. Good luck!
PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor:
I just got an iPad and I love it! I also love Facebook and downloaded the App for it onto my iPad but I don’t seem to be able to chat anymore. Can you tell me why that is?
Cathy
Dear Cathy:
Yes I know what you mean, I love mine too although I still have to have my laptop because I find that doing any kind of word processing is not as easy and convenient. But for email and Facebook, etc. it is great to carry with you! Plus I’ve become addicted to the Scrabble game – it’s a really great App.
Anyways on to your question. What you will have to do is go to the App store and download Friendly for Facebook which is free and Friendly Plus for Facebook which is 99 cents. Enjoy!
PC Doctor
Until next time…happy computing!
Posted: to Athol Library News on Thu, Dec 9, 2010
Updated: Thu, Dec 9, 2010