With e-mail it's easier to stay in touch

Computer Life column for 5/31/97 by
Richard Gordon

I remember when it was a status symbol if you had e-mail.

Now there are over 40 million Americans capable of writing each other electronically.

Most of the time, we prefer the immediacy of meeting each other face-to-face or talking on the phone. But what if the person you want to talk to is not available right now? You can send e-mail when your party isn't there, even when his or her computer is turned off; your e-mail waits for your party to be ready to check messages.

But it's more than a fancy way to bypass phone tag. You can usually squeeze more content into an e-mail message than you can a phone message. And if the person you are trying to reach uses e-mail, chances are good that he or she will have more choices about what to do with your message if it comes via e-mail rather than via FAX.

In case you don't have e-mail yet, here's how it works.

Let's say I want to send a message to my brother in Chicago. I type the note using my computer here in Delaware and press the send key. My e-mail program takes what I've typed and sticks it in the electronic equivalent of an addressed envelope. Then the message gets delivered to a mail server, a computer whose job it is to process mail messages and check network addresses.

After the mail server finds the computer I've listed in my brother's e-mail address, it asks that computer if my brother's account exists. As soon as it gets the OK from the server in Chicago, it delivers the message, then breaks the connection.

The message does not go directly to my brother, but to a mail server on his end. There, it waits. When my brother has time, he starts his e-mail program, which checks to see if he has any messages. If he does, it grabs them.

When I send my brother a note, the e-mail is usually delivered in seconds or minutes (depending on network traffic), without either of us incurring long-distance phone charges.

Your computer has to be connected to the Internet, either through a direct network connection or over a modem and phone line. And the details will vary depending on how you connect and what e-mail program you use.

Real byteheads may chastise me for over-simplifying how this works. But c'mon, guys, does someone just learning about e-mail really need to know that each message is actually broken up into several smaller packets, each of which contains address and sequence information so it can be reassembled on the recipients' server? And does it really change a novice e-mail user's life to know that the packets can be sent over many different network paths?

E-mail-less left out

One thing everyone should be careful about is sending and receiving computer files along with e-mail. If you want to share a picture of your new baby with your electronic friends and relatives, be forewarned that not every mail package will know what to do with that picture. For some people, perhaps because they are protecting themselves from macro viruses, it can be a cumbersome process to open e-mail that contains something other than plain typing.

Some of my e-mail-less friends complain they get invited to fewer of my parties. They are welcome, but it's just so much easier to put 30 e-mail addresses onto one message than to make 30 phone calls or send out 30 invitations.

Of course, the marketing sector has found this out, too, making my inbox as full of "important offers" as my post-office box in the holiday shopping season. But junk e-mail about screen savers, starch blockers, get-rich-now schemes, and flat-tire fixers will have to wait for another column.

At least no one has interrupted my dinner with an e-mail offer to waterproof my basement.

Web picks for Delaware

Here's a question for you. Which one web site would you tell someone new to the Delaware Valley about? No fair nominating your own site!

Copyright © 1997, The News Journal Company

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