Managing email: Using Eudora Light

You have already seen, in session 1, how you can use Netscape to send email messages to one of the mailing lists archived on the School web site, and how to read these messages. However, Netscape does not support accessing or receiving personal email.

To receive and manage email, in a general way, we will use the Eudora Light application. Eudora allows email to be prepared and sent; it allows you to download email from your personal email-box on the School server; and it allows you to manage and organise you own archives of email messages you have received.

Like Netscape the effective use of Eudora relies on using a configuration diskette where Eudora will store specific information relating to your email account, and will also store your received email messages. You can use a single diskette as both the Netscape and Eudora configuration diskette.

A notice, detailing how to set up and use a Eudora diskette was posted to the Local-Notices mailing list within the past few weeks. Find that message now in the web archives. In fact, look for all messages referring to Eudora Light (also known as Freeware Eudora). Read these messages carefully.

You will find Eudora in the Internet group in Program Manager. Start it up now, and configure it, as described in the message on Local-Notices.

Explore and experiment with the use of Eudora for a while. Have a look at the various menus. Start up the viewer for the online manual (also in the Internet program group). Browse through it (there will not be time to read it in detail).

The demonstrator will tell you the assigned password for your account. Verify that Eudora can check for mail received into your mailbox. Try sending yourself email. Try exchanging email messages with the person beside you. Send a message with the following text:

    subscribe softeng1-95
    end

to the address majordomo@mjmail.eeng.dcu.ie. See what messages you receive back.

You must now change your account password to one of your own choosing. Choosing a good password is not easy - it must be both hard for anyone (or any machine!) to guess, yet be easy to remember. Briefly, your password should be 8 characters long, use a mix of both upper and lower case letters (which are considered to be distinct in passwords), some digits, and some special or punctuation characters. You may not use the "space" character in a password. Read through this online advice on choosing Good Passwords.

When you have made up a satisfactory new password, which you are sure you will be able to remember, use the Change Password option on the Special menu in Eudora to actually change the password. Note that this may fail for a variety of reasons - for example, if you type in the old password wrongly, or the new password is too short, or does not have a mix of both upper and lower case, or does not have any non alphabetics. If the password changing fails, the old password will remain in effect, so just go through the procedure again.

When you have succeeded in changing your password, check again that your email access is still OK by sending yourself another test message and seeing that you can receive it.

You should change your password again at least once every term or so - and immediately if you have any reason to suspect that it may have been compromised.

Finally, using Eudora, compose a short message (one paragraph), summarising your experience of this lab exercise, and mail it to SOFTENG1-95@mjmail.eeng.dcu.ie .

That completes the exercise; you can now shut down all applications, take out your diskette, exit Windows, and power down the PC.