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The LangaList
Standard Edition

2005-05-16

A Free Email Newsletter from Fred Langa
That Helps You Get More From Your Hardware, 
Software, and Time Online

Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free!

1) Mail Server Alternatives For Home/Small Offices

The article on "Email Server in Home/Small Office?" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2005/2005-05-09.htm ) brought some interesting mail about products with which I was unfamiliar:

Fred: Just got back to work after a long weekend and was reading through the May 8th Langalist. James D. Crawford wrote in and asked about a simple e-mail server for his home.

While I agree that in the traditional sense, running your own e-mail server can be a full time job, I have a suggestion for an easy alternative. For well over three years now, we have been running "IA eMailServer" from True North Software ( http://www.tnsoft.com/ ). It's a full featured e-mail server that runs as a Windows service. The 'easy' part though, is the fact that you don't need a dedicated, full time connection to your ISP. You have your ISP hold ANY email to ANY account in your domain (example: *@domain.com) in just one POP box. Then you setup IA eMailServer to occasionally check that account. It will pull in any mail it finds in your ISP POP box, then attempt to deliver it to your local accounts by the 'name' part of the addresses.

  For example:
 - Setup IA eMailServer with three 'local' accounts: Fred, James & Tony.
 - Have your ISP dump all mail into an account called mailbox@domain.com.
 - Configure IA eMailServer to check for mail in that POP box occasionally.

  Now when IA eMailServer checks with your ISP, and finds it has 8 messages
waiting (just like Outlook or any e-mail client would) it pulls down all the
mail. When it takes a quick look at the mail it just pulled in, it sees that
3 are addressed to 'james@domain.com', 2 are to 'fred@domain.com', 2 are to
tony@domain.com' and the remaining one is to a 'suzy@domain.com' address.

  When James checks his e-mail (no difference from typical Outlook-style
setup) his 3 messages are delivered to him. When you and I check our mail,
our individual messages are delivered to us. And the 'Suzy' e-mail just sits
in the postmaster mailbox on the server where it can be ignored (because an
account doesn't exist) or manually inspected / distributed.

  A couple of caveats:

  (1) Although there is an evaluation version, the software isn't free.
      Prices start about $165 US for a 10 mailbox standard edition licence.
  (2) Using the POP box message retrieval method, the process 'breaks'
      receiving BCC: addressed messages. This is not a fault of the
      software, but a result of the 'To:' field in the message generally doesn't
      have the user's address in it.

This e-mail is already getting too long to continue on the features of the
server, but it has been a great addition to our business. I/we have no
association with True North Software or IA eMailServer other than we use it
at work, and both of our companies are Canadian. Hopefully you can pass this
info along to other Langalisters.

Thanks, Tony Dew

=========

Hi Fred, There is a product called Mailtraq which will do the job.... http://www.mailtraq.com. There was a free version for home use, not sure if it still exists. I used to use Mailtraq, the commercial version, in our three man office for distributing mail. It does not require permanent connection or fixed IP addresses, we used it on a dial up connection quite successfully.
Regards, Barrie Whiteley

Thanks, Tony and Barrie--- I learned something new from these emails, and I suspect many readers will, too!

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"I wish there were a lifetime Plus! subscription option! Thanks Fred for
your consistently accurate and unbiased newsletter. I trust the content
of your newsletter above all others I receive. Keep up the great work!"
---Allison

Thanks, Allison!

There's no lifetime option, but for only about $1 per month, you get
The LangaList Plus! Edition--- ad-free, spam-proof,
with even more content, tips, tricks, advice, and downloads
than the Standard Edition you're now reading.

Plus, it comes with a MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE!
You can't lose!

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2) Out Of Room On "C:"

Greetings: I've been a reader of your wonderful newsletter for years. This past January, I finally signed up for the Plus edition and am loving it!

My question for you should be simple, I think, but I have not been able to find anything about it so far.

I have a laptop with an 80GB drive. It's split (factory settings) into two partitions, a 13GB C:\ drive and a 67GB D:\ drive.

My problem is that I'm running out of space on the C:\ drive partition. I've moved everything I can force myself to move to the D:\ drive partition and still have little room (company data and mandates).... Help! ---Neil L. Carter

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3) More Ways To Capture Dialog Text

Fred - Regarding: "Capturing 'Uncopyable' Text" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2005/2005-05-12.htm#3 ) ...with the error dialog box on the screen, simply press Ctrl-C (copy), and if the developer is following the Microsoft rules, the error message will be on the clipboard. I believe a Windows "beep" will sound on a successful copy. Open Notepad and Paste it. Voila! Mike G

Thanks, Mike. That's certainly worth trying, but if it doesn't work, the suggestions we made previously can help.

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4) When "Off" Means "On"

Hello Fred, I am a long time standard reader that finally upgraded to the Plus edition. You always have great reading.

A few months ago, my computer was on but I was upstairs. When I walked by the computer I smelled burnt electric and the computer was off. After checking the cpu and other items, I figured it was the power supply. Bought a new, and bigger, one and computer worked, for about two months. I upgraded to an even bigger one and computer has worked fine since.

Now for my minor problem. When the computer shuts down, my mouse still stays lit. I have to reach behind the computer to turn off the power supply for it to turn off.  Any help from you or the mass of readers would be greatly appreciated. ---Daniel

You've encountered a wasteful "convenience" built into many newer appliances, including PCs: Most newer computers don't really turn all the way off. In fact, the "power" switch on the front panel isn't really a power switch at all; it's a switch that sends a shutdown signal to the BIOS, which then puts the PC into a kind of deep standby mode. Depending on how things are set up, some peripherals (mice, network cards, modem...) may stay partially awake so they can be used to bring the PC out of its slumber.

Even in PCs without powered peripherals, the motherboard itself may still be powered on, despite the system being nominally "off." You can sometimes see this when you open the case: a small LED may be glowing brightly on the motherboard, to remind you that it's still powered, despite seeming to be off.

To turn these PCs all the way off, you do indeed need to use the real power switch, which is usually located on the back of the power supply; or physically depower the PC by turning off the wall outlet, pulling the plug, or using a power strip or UPS to control the flow of power.

I'm not sure why your mouse behavior has changed; perhaps the new power supply is delivering residual power to the Motherboard where the original did not. Or, it may simply be a BIOS setting that got changed when you disassembled/reassembled the PC. Try entering the BIOS setup program now, check the power-saving settings, and also set the PC to ignore all "wake on..." events (wake on LAN, wake on modem, wake on mouse...."). With no "wake on" settings, these peripherals may no longer draw residual power when the PC is nominally off.

BTW: PCs in a hardware-controlled deep standby still draw 5-15 watts or so, which may not seem like much until you realize there are hundreds of millions of PCs in the world. If everyone turned their PCs all the way off, we'd save the equivalent of the output of several entire power plants.

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5) Free Calculator Tool

Hi Fred, I just wanted to share an a cool little MS-DOS calculator utility that I wrote with your readers. It allows you to perform basic and advanced calculations from the MS-DOS prompt. All you have to do is type "calc" plus the equation and the Enter key. For more information on the utility, check out my blog at http://windowstipoftheday.blogspot.com/ ; I posted it on March 21, 2005 [click here and scroll down: http://langa.com/u/9p.htm ]. Thank you, Jason Savitt

Nice site, Jason, lots of good stuff there. Thanks!

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6) Don't Make Me Beg! :-)

If you think the LangaList is a worthwhile read, maybe a friend would find it useful too! Just use the following link to recommend the LangaList---your friend may find a new source of useful information and you just may win one of three FREE ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTIONS to the LangaList Plus! edition given each month. (If your name is drawn and you're already a Plus! subscriber, your current subscription will be extended by a full year.)

Check out the details at http://langa.com/recommend.htm . Thanks for recommending the LangaList--- and good luck!

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7) Another Reason Why Dial-Up May Die....

Hi Fred, In reference to "Dial-Up Dies For No Obvious Reason"  ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2005/2005-05-09.htm#2 ), it might also be worth mentioning that this person should also check their Outlook Express settings to see if they are set to disconnect the connection after checking for email when they are connected to the Internet. Perhaps their settings are set to check their email every 10 minutes and after checking, the Outlook Express settings may then be causing the system to disconnect the dial-up connection. I've had it happen to me with Wal-Mart's ISP service before when I was using their service, especially after doing a XP security update, Outlook's setting got mysteriously changed without me knowing it and it took me about a half an hour to figure out what was going on. ---Nelson Donnell

Dear Fred I read "2) Dial-Up Dies For No Obvious Reason" in your last newsletter and remembered that I had a similar problem with my friends computer where his dial-up would just quit after he'd been on for only a few minutes. It took me a long while to find it and it was very simple: My friend uses Outlook Express and had by mistake checked "hangup when done" and after Express had retrieved his email it just hung up! I unchecked it and the problem went away. I like yer newsletter! Thanks Bob Deloyd

Thanks, Bob and Nelson!

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8) A Milestone!

Our  collection of Reader Sites has now grown past the 5,000 mark! Do you have a home page or website? (It doesn't matter what size.) Please click over to http://langa.com/code.htm , and maybe you can join the thousands of LangaList readers who have "Loaded the Code!" (If you've already "Loaded The Code" and are wondering if your site will appear here or on the Langa.Com web site, please see http://langa.com/link.txt )

Speaking of which: Here's another eclectic sample of reader sites--- some professional, some very personal:

View A Randomly-Chosen Reader Site From Among All Listed
http://langa.com/randomlink.htm

Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date Sites Starting At
http://langa.com/readersites.htm

Windows XP Tips & Resources
http://www.js.excelitehost.com/

Preserve LA
http://www.preservela.com/

AffordaSoft
http://affordasoft.com/

Mo' Power Computer Repair
http://www.mo-power.com/

Joe's Collage
http://mysite.verizon.net/jacentko/

technologically speaking
http://www.technologicallyspeaking.biz.tc/

Watching paint dry
http://whanafi.blogspot.com/

The Horse Home
http://thehorsehome.com/

Tech news
http://techjunkeez.com/

Assisting Microsoft .NET Developers
http://www.dotnetbytes.com/

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9) Reader Gets Blacklisted

Fred, I have my own domain name which I use in conjunction with my one-man business servicing computers for small businesses and families. Lately, someone has apparently been hawking a variety of pharmaceuticals using my domain name as a spoofed originating address. As a result, my email is getting blocked on an almost daily basis. I know absolutely no way to fight this, and I'm sure there are a host of people who are struggling with the same problem.

Is there any way to prevent my domain name from getting blacklisted, or should I just give up and use the email address provided by my local ISP? ---Daniel  Light

First, I'd make sure your email has been spoofed, and not actually hijacked: Some mail servers are set up with low or broken security so that spammers can break in and use the server for real, as if it were their own. In this case, the spam really could be coming from your domain, even though you're not the one sending it. I suggest you convey your concerns to your web host, and see what they say about spamming, security, etc. If they're nonresponsive, move to a better host--- they're not hard to find.

Beyond that, there's not much you can do: There are a million crude antispam filters out there, and many don't distinguish between spam that really flows from an address, and spam that only superficially appears to come from an address. Still other filters (and blocklist/blacklist services) will block an entire range of addresses, or all mail from a given ISP, if even just *one* account in that range or one account at an ISP sends spam. It's ridiculous.

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10) Just For Grins

Speaking of ISPs with bad spamming filters:

AOL Dumps Fla. County's Emergency News As Spam:
VERO BEACH, Fla. -- Emergency managers in Indian River County thought  the best way to get their message out was by e-mail, but AOL disagrees. The Internet service provider is treating the emergency coordinator's address as a source of spam. The idea was to offer quick alerts about hurricanes, tornados and other weather emergencies, and about 4,200 subscribers signed up for the service.

"In the 16 years I've been in this office, it is the No. 1 thing that  best informs the public," said Nathan McCollum, the county's emergency management coordinator.

The problem started last year with the frequent alerts during the unusually busy hurricane season. "Because we send out mail in large numbers, it becomes a pattern for spam senders," said Basil Dancy, a county computer software engineer. The county is working with AOL to try to let the e-mails through. In the meantime, people who want the computerized weather bulletins are being told to put the county's e-mail account in their address book to let their computers accept the e-mail. County officials also are sending e-mails to AOL customers using a temporary e-mail account. "We know it's going out but, in the heat of the moment, it's not a  reliable system," said McCollum.

(see http://tinyurl.com/8kdkb for more info )

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11) Plus! Edition Highlights:

• Automated Browsing
     (launch, capture scheduled streaming content)
• "Set Up a Network, Save a Family"
     (alternative ways to share connections)
• More Ways To Preserve, Share, Restore Favorites
     (local, and via web)

Plus! edition subscribers not only get much more content in every issue (like the above), but also have access to a private web site with over 100,000 words of special content and features not found in *any* issue of the newsletter; along with dozens of private downloads and much more--- all for just $1 per month!

Plus! Edition info: http://langa.com/plus.htm 

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(Give a gift subscription to the LangaList Plus edition!
Click <a href= " http://langa.com/plus_gift.htm ">here</a>)

See you next issue, 2005-05-23!

Best,

Fred
( Editor@Langa.Com )

Please recommend the LangaList to a friend! (And maybe win a prize!)

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