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It works with mail on cable Internet systems and on regular dialup providers.
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Mail2Web lets you get your mail from anywhere, even if you have cable Internet


Feb. 13, 2002


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, The Post-Standard

   Getting your e-mail when you are away from home used to be a hassle, if you could do it at all.
   This was an especially big problem if you had cable Internet service, as I do. There's no obvious way to dial into a cable Internet system and check your mail.
   But that problem is a thing of the past. A Web site called "mail2web.com" gives you a way to read your mail, download attachments and send replies no matter what kind of standard Internet provider you have. It works with mail on cable Internet systems such as Road Runner and mail on regular dialup providers. There's no charge and you won't see annoying advertising messages.
   All you do is open the main Web page (at www.mail2web.com) and type your e-mail address and password, then click a "Go" button. There's also an advanced login option if you have problem getting mail the standard way.
   You'll see a list of e-mail waiting for you. You can read and reply to any of them, and you can even delete junk mail from your mailbox (or any other mail, such as old mail you've already read) right from the mail2web page.
   Because you can get at your e-mail from the Web, you can use any Web browser on any computer. That's ideal, for example, if you're visiting your sister-in-law in Peoria and you need to check your mail. (You won't harm her computer by checking your mail with it.)
   As great as this is, mail2web has a serious limitation. It won't work with AOL, Compuserve or any other non-standard Internet mail systems. The problem isn't a flaw in mail2web. AOL and the other non-standard systems do not work the way all normal Internet mail operates.
   (AOL, the biggest proprietary online service, refuses to change, mostly because AOL users would have less incentive to stick with America Online once they saw how much better normal Internet mail is than AOL's creaky and incompatible method.)
   I didn't know about mail2web until I needed a way to get my mail in an emergency. My mail software was stuck on a gigantic e-mail attachment that refused to come across from the mail server. Each time I ran it, my mail program tried to get that huge message, and each time it tried, it locked up.
   I remembered mail2web from a recommendation sent to me by one of my readers. Within a few minutes, I had logged onto the mail2web site and deleted the offending message. My own mail program worked fine again, and I didn't lose a single piece of mail apart from the huger-than-huge message.