New e-mail address, my dad being an idiot.

[007]

We're on dial up AOL at the minute. And i'm trying to convince my dad to get BT broadband, so I can play Xbox live. But he's being an idiot, and saying how his email address on AOL is all set up, and he'll lose it going to BT.

I tried to say, just email everyone saying your new address. But he's having none of it. He says if we get BB, it will have to be AOL.

Can he divert emails from his AOL account, once we move to BT to his new BT account?

Or has he just got to swallow his pride, and email everyone and move aside from AOL.

[mid]

Is there a specific reason to not keep his AOL address and go with them for ASDL? I know that the XBox didn't like AOL broadband originally, but they may have fixed that (of course, they may not have).

[Ginza]

I thought this was another of your dads a bastard thread

meh tbh.

[mid]

I thought this was another of your dads a bastard thread

Bastard, AOL user, tomato, tomato

Sorry 007 - just joshing; AOL users get a hell of a lot of stick.

[007]

Believe me, I DO NOT want to be an AOL user. I'm sooo close to getting Broadband too.

Shut it Ginza!

[Len]

Can you not just sign into aol's site and get yr mail from there or redirect it to your Outlook etc? Surely they let you keep yr mail addy if you move?

I moved from Openworld to Bulldog and just closed my bband acc but kept my mail addy, no problem?

Just had a look at aol's site and the front page lets you put yr username and password in to collect, amonst other things, yr mail. So where's the problem? They want you to keep using their mail addy so they can keep tabs on you and send you loads of rubbish. If your still not convinced just ring 'em to confirm...simple.

[DaveW]

Dudes, what is wrong with you guys living in the UK? It seems like 75% of you are on AOL. Even _Americans_ don't use American Online anymore! If you can't get BB in your area, surely there must be some local dial-up ISP alternatives to AOL.

[Len]

Lets hope so for his sake. I never have and never will use aol...but his problem is its his Dad's misunderstanding of losing, or not as the case may be, his mail addy. Decision is out of his hands...

[charlesr]

Tell him to sort his life out and get a proper email address. If you buy a website (for example on my hosts www.oneandone.co.uk) it's ?12 a year for a .com
You can then set up a redirection so that any message sent to *@yourwebsite.com gets sent to the email provided by your new BB supplier (e.g. [email protected]). Alternatively, pay a bit more per year and get email space which you can access direct from outlook or online and avoid ever having to change email EVER again. Then you can change your BB supplier as often as you want. Don't get stuck using the lame addresses that internet providers give you. Get your own.

[charlesr]

And I highly recommend http://www.nildram.com/ as a BB supplier.

[Magnakai]

Your dad could use this:

http://communicator.aol.com/

He can keep his account for free, and this is like an Outlook thing for AOL.
Much better than the integrated email client, imho.

[Vaipon]

Yust another piece of info:

Most ISPS now allow dial-up customers to collect mail via their servers without actually connecting through their own modems/network. This started to happen not long ago, with most ISPs changing their policy. Previously, the only way you could be authenticated through a pop3 server was by dialling into that particular network directly.

I'm not sure how AOL are set up, but I assume your dad currently uses an email client such as outlook with AOL's SMTP and POP3 servers configured. Although you won't normally be able to send email out through a SMTP gateway if you are with a different ISP, many of the ISPs now allow authentication via pop3 (inbound mail) from any network.

So if you moved to bt, your outlook client should still be able to gather email from your old AOL account each time you click send/receive. The only change would be that your dad would have to reply via the new bt address, as SMTP (outbound) isn't normally allowed to be used in this way.

Worth checking AOL's policy on this, as your dad will probably be able to keep his old address for receiving stuff. When he replies, it'll go via the new address, but his display name would be exactly the same anyway. If he can't live with that, he's being a bit bloody fussy.

Finally, AOL SUCK!!!!! Get rid.

[Super Stu]

Dudes, what is wrong with you guys living in the UK? It seems like 75% of you are on AOL. Even _Americans_ don't use American Online anymore! If you can't get BB in your area, surely there must be some local dial-up ISP alternatives to AOL.

Isn't AOL the most popular ISP in the USA? It certainly isn't in the UK.

[Fusion]

it's funny - out of all the ISP's i used back in the day, when i was on dial-up, AOL were the only ones who didn't disconect me after two hours. for that i was very grateful, and i must stick up for them. can't say i'd use their DSL service, mind

[Super Stu]

Demon have never had disconnects, and are a ****e side better