I apologize for taking up space with a nonpiano question, but I need help. You have, in the past, been so very kind with your assistance.

I have a new laptop but want to use my old laptop also. Do I need to change my e-mail address with my ISP for my new one? Or do I need to create a new identify and notify them?

Many thanks, Kathleen

That depends, Kathleen. If your e-mail address is provided THROUGH your old ISP, you likely will have to change. If it is a "third-party" address, like hotmail, gmail, etc., you should be alright.

Edit: oh, wait...I didn't answer the 'right' question. There should be no problem using two different computers. Just be aware that one might pull the messages off the server, and therefore, they wouldn't show up on the other computer.

Good answer, JPDelmore.

I would suggest having your primary, personal email set up on one computer (the one you use the most). The third party emails, Gmail, etc... can be accessed from any computer with online access.

Congratulations on the new laptop!

Rick

Actually, if you set your computers to "don't delete messages on server" you should be able to POP or IMAP from multiple devices. I do email (from a single server account) from my laptop, iPad, and phone, as well as a desktop, all sync'd fine. You might set your outgoing folder to be on the server for those as well.

But, if you're going to exclusively use your new laptop, and won't ever use the old one, then just:

a) set up the new laptop to look for mail at the correct server (using your login provided by the ISP) and using the correct outgoing mail server,

b) wipe your old computer before you give it away or discard it.

If you only do email from your web browser, then you don't even need to do (a).

If you use an e-mail client, such as Mac Mail or Windows Outlook, you will need to add your account into that program in order to receive your e-mail through the client. If you used a web-based interface to check your mail (i.e. go to a web site and log in) you do not need to worry about that.


edit: welp. bessel already covered this lol

Thank you all so much. Your advice and info will be very useful, once I get the new laptop out of its box.

My best,
Kathleen

Just one additional note, Kathleen. If your ISP gives you a choice of using IMAP or POP3 you would be better served to use IMAP if you intend ot look at mail from more than one machine. POP3 downloads the emails to your computer, so email on one machine won't be on the other. IMAP just looks at the files on the server without actually moving them to your computer. By using IMAP your inbox will look the same regardless of which machine you use to access your mail. Of course, not every ISP gives you a choice. POP3
is probably more commonly used. As bessel mentioned, POP3 does give you the option to leave mail on server which yields somewhat similar results. It is just a matter of checking a box in your email client (Windows Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.).

If you don't use Outlook or a similar program the messages are actually not on your computer but on an external server, so you just have to log in as usual (using your browser). You can also check messages at the library for example, so on any computer.
If you do use Outlook or a similar program you could also use a quick method by making a backup on your old computer instead of reimporting all messages, which could take a long time if you have many messages, particularly if they have attachments etc. Then you can copy the backup to the appropriate folder on your new computer. If you tell us your OS we will tell you where it is. This is what I did when I bought a laptop and discarded my old desktop.

You can even copy your address book and settings if I remember correctly.

Yup. Browser bookmarks or favorites, too.

I recently upgraded to a faster machine, and I exported my Firefox bookmarks and my Thunderbird address book to a USB stick. Then just plugged it into the new machine and imported them to the new installs of ff and tb. Quick and easy, although the bookmark import proved to be a bit glitchy and took me a couple of tries to figure out.