Q. Your email times out, or you receive the same
email over and over again like your email is "stuck"; what could be the
problem?
A. One of the first things you should consider if your mail is
not downloading and or you are getting server timeout errors is perhaps
you have a very large file or several large files in your mailbox. Often
files over a several Megabytes (1000Kilobytes = 1 megabyte) can cause these timeouts over a dialup
connection. The general rule of thumb is that for every megabyte you
download over dialup expect it to take at least 5 to 10 minutes.
Additionally large attachments in your mailbox can "clog" your mailbox
so that all the smaller emails before the large attachment will come
into your mail box in duplicate over and over again, until the actual
large file is removed from the mailbox.
We recommend if any of the above happens, to close your conventional
email program, disconnect from the Internet and then reconnect to the
Internet. Often conventional email programs such as Outlook express will
continue to check your email *even though* you have exited the actual
program. This is why we recommend you disconnect from the Internet
first, as that will force your email program to stop checking your
email. If you try to log into your webmail (mentioned below and your
conventional email program is still trying to check your email, that
will cause server timeouts and lock you out from your email for up to 10
minutes.
When you reconnect to the Internet open up a browser windows such as
Internet Explorer and open up
http://email.pon.net (NO www needed) and then log in with your email
address and password. This is Pacific Online's web based email and logs
you right onto the mail server. It is a faster and easier method to view
and remove large file attachments.
Once you log in you will see a main screen with all of your emails. If
you look on the far right side of this screen you will see a column
titled "Size". Files in the range of 1-500KB are normal sized 500-1000kb
are a bit bigger, and files over 1000kb in size may cause timeouts,
server errors or email in duplicate.
There are check boxes next to each email. If you put in a check and then
click on Delete, the email in question will have a line through it once
the page refreshes. Lastly click on "purge" and then you may log out.
The email with the large attachment will now be gone and you are free to
use your conventional email program again. If you do not want to delete
the large file right away, you can open it and view it, however you
should however delete and purge (as described above) this email *before*
opening up your conventional email program such as Outlook Express.
Pacific Online also has the ability to limit the size emails that you
receive. For example if you do not want to receive emails larger than
say 2 or 3 megabytes in size, Pacific Online can implement these
limitations based upon special request. Simply email
support@pon.net with your email and
the size limitation you would like implemented upon your email address.
Additional Information (Photo Imaging)
Many large attachments are photographs taken from digital cameras. Many
digital cameras these days are taking images that are up to several
megabytes in size. An image of that size is of course very slow to
download over a dialup connection. If the image is simply resized to a
resolution similar to 800x600 at 72dpi - you can expect the image to have a
size of 100 to 150kilobytes which makes a much smoother and faster
download. In addition a photo sized to 800x600 at 72dpi will still fill up
your entire computer monitor screen.
There are many good image processing programs available on the market
today that will resize photos, allow you to edit photos, create special
photo effects and much more. This is a good idea to do before sending
photos to someone using a dialup connection.
Some free photo editing programs are the following:
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