I can receive emails on my Palm, but cannot send them.?

Question

I have palm 800w and my wife has another palm. We both have same issues. We have cox (Phoenix) email account. I have heard that they will not let users send email thru PDA devices but when I called cox, someone told me they use a different POP address for outgoing mail. When I configured new address, same message came up " cannot send messages, check network settings...etc" Is there anyone with similar problems that can offer solution(s)? Also, if I get another email program, can I get one that downloads to my palm (I already have hotmail but I have to sign on every time I use it)? Thanks

Answer 1

Hi,

It's common for your incoming (POP) mail server to be different from your outgoing (SMTP) mail server.  You need to enter the correct value in the 'Outgoing Mail Server' field.  If it's Cox, I suppose they gave you "smtp.central.cox.net".

But that's not the end of it... to prevent abuse, many ISPs will *not* allow access to their SMTP server from an outside network (your cell phone data network is an outside network to Cox).

So when you get to the "Basic setup completed" screen on your Palm, you need to tap the "Advanced" button... from there, you will get to an 'incoming server settings'... don't worry about that, just tap 'Next'... then 'outgoing server settings'... here you can try checking  "Use authentication" and enter your username and password so the outgoing server can confirm it's you.

If that doesn't work, you can try selecting the 'Use Secure Connection' and seeing if that works.  Note that secure SMTP connections usually require that you change the outgoing port from 25 to 465.

After all that, it may STILL not work - if Cox have draconian rules about not allowing external access to their SMTP server.

In which case... you can use another SMTP server and that should work fine.  Your cell phone network provider probably has an SMTP server which you can most likely find by googling your provider name plus "SMTP".

What I use... I actually paid a one-time fee for a third-party SMTP server.  I went to http://www.fastmail.fm and paid $15 and I got an account that gave me secure access to their SMTP server.

I use it everywhere... on my cell phone, on my PDA, on my laptop when visiting hotels overseas... having an SMTP server that I can use everywhere has made life easier!

In regards to your last question... if you do get a fastmail account at http://www.fastmail.fm you can have that account automatically poll your Hotmail account.  So if you configure your Fastmail email to be visible on your handheld, you can view your Hotmail email that way.

Cheers

Steve T