Is it possible to open an email account, with full facilities, which can be used from somebody else's computer?

I was down in London for a few days recently and, as I don't have a laptop, had to try to use my hosts'. I didn't succeed, perhaps because it was a Windows only computer.

As I key this, it has occurred to me that it might be possible to use a usb drive for this.

Any advice would be appreciated

You would probably need to use a java email client to allow cross-platform usage, the only speed bump would be that you would have to change your smtp server depending on which ISP the current computer is using

cheers

kbp,

you mean that when using somebody else's machine I'd have to set up an account on that computer? As if it was my own, in other words?

Any e-mail service that has a web interface like gmail, yahoo, or even hotmail will let you sign in through a web browser from anyones machine without setting any new items up when you want to log in.

Regards,

Alunduil

No, ISP's will allow you to check/download your email from anywhere (pop3), but they only relay mail from customers in their own network (SMTP). So you can have your account configured with the smtp server of your current ISP but if you move to a different house/town/building/etc with a different ISP you will need to modify your account settings to use that ISP's mail servers for outbound mail.

The easiest solution is webmail which is probably why it's so popular

cheers

You could set up a USB flash drive with your username.default profile for Thunderbird. Then as long as anyone else had the Thunderbird client whether on windows or Linux, you could access your entire profile of saved emails along with the configurations of the servers for sending the mail. The problem would occur if you had to set up Thunderbird for the first time....you have to change the path for the default account, otherwise Thunderbird tries to set up the default account on the system it is installed on. Otherwise, you could manage accounts (with profile manager) to change from the host's profile to your profile.

Unless you use separate mail service provider and ISP. I use luxsci.com as a mail service provider; they're not cheap but their service and support are excellent (I have no commercial connection with them beyond being a customer).

As always, great and pertinent responses. I have the idea now and will investigate the costs of a webmail service provider.

Many thanks

Betula

Webmail is FREE! *Surely* you've hear of Hotmail and Gmail and all the rest....? (and a shout out to the less-known one that I use - www.graffiti.net )

resetreset,

Yes I had heard of them but had no real idea of what they were. Thanks to you I now have an email account with mail.yahoo.com which is working well. I see now how a web-based account is independent of one's ISP.

I did have a look at Graffiti but couldn't find any actual info about how it worked on their site. I would have had to sign up and open an account first, which doesn't strike me as good marketing.

Thanks again.