October 28, 2017

What’s the Deal With Sending Emails From Abroad on a Windows Client?

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Here’s a question for the technically minded among you.

Back in olden days (1999 or so), I always had trouble with email when I was on the road. I could receive but I couldn’t send, both in the US and abroad. My only choice was to use my internet provider’s ghastly web-based app for sending email. Web apps and built-in smartphone apps always seem to work without problems, but my normal client (Outlook at the time) was useless.

In any case, that’s in the dim past and I’d forgotten all about it. Then a friend of mine went on vacation to Ireland, and when he came back he complained that he couldn’t send emails from there. He spent an hour on the phone with Cox, our internet provider, until they evidently flipped a switch or something and he could once again send emails.

When I got to Ireland, I figured I might have the same problem, but I didn’t. I’m on T-Mobile, and it connected as soon as we landed. I sent and received email just fine on my phone. Then we got to our house in Kerry and I connected my tablet to WiFi. No problems. The Windows client worked fine. I set up the phone as a hotspot and connected to that. No problems. We flew to London and I connected to the WiFi in our house there. No problems. One way or another, I figured that Cox had changed its tune.

Then we flew back to Dublin for a few days and I sent some emails. At the airport on the last day I sent another one. But then I noticed that they were all still pending. It turns out I couldn’t send emails via our hotel’s WiFi or via the airport’s WiFi. Apparently the ability of a normal Windows email client¹ to send email depends on exactly what server I’m connected to.

What’s the deal with this? Since I can always send email by connecting to my phone’s hotspot, this is no longer too big a deal. But I’m curious. Why would I be able to send emails from some places in Ireland and Britain but not others?²

¹Mine happens to be eM Client, but every other client I’ve used acts the same way.

²I’d call Cox and ask them, but I assume that would be a waste of time. I’m looking for a real answer here, not marketing gibberish.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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