Tom in London wrote:
🙂
yeah, it's complicated, but that's because it has lots of options and features. What I like about it most is that it is *completely reliable* and exhibits
none of the innumerable issues that people are continually experiencing with Apple Mail.
FWIW, I have no issues with Mail, and I have been using it (heavily) with 11 mail accounts for more than two years now.
BTW you can set up Eudora to check all of your mail from all accounts, all at the same time, including Google (Gmail). Easy.
I have never used a mail account that cannot do this. Mail.app, Thunderbird - they can both do this. Mail.app is not perfect - it's rules are too basic - but I like the integration with Address Book and iCal, as I use those to sync with my phone. That said, when I first switched to Mac I used Thunderbird, because that's what I was using on Windows, and it worked great.
But, like I said, sign up for a gmail account. In settings while in gmail, choose to use IMAP (I suppose you could use POP as well, actually.) When you set up the gmail account, use the proper servers (imap.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com). The user name is the full e-mail address - whatever@gmail.com. You need to go to the SSL setting page in Eudora and tell it to use SSL for IMAP and SMTP (both set to "Required - Alternate Port").
Once you verify that gmail is working ok, I think (I say I think because I am using Eudora in sponsored mode, so I cannot set up multiple personalities) that you use the SMTP relay setting to relay your outgoing mail in all of your accounts to use gmail's smtp server. Because it is using SSL TCP port 465, it is unlikely to be blocked, as some WiFi providers will block all SMTP port 25 traffic, and your home ISP is obviously not having you log in to use SMTP (as most probably do not), so they will not accept outgoing SMTP mail traffic from outside their network. Gmail, by design, will, and you have the added benefit of having the traffic encrypted, so your password and your mail are not sent using clear text.