Due to the recent failure of my parent's desktop I need to setup their new machine/s. Now whether their old emails can be recovered or not is another issue I have to deal with, but I would like some suggestions and/or comments on the following ideas. I haven't worked with any of this sort of stuff in over four years so I'm not sure of the capabilities of the current offerings, so please feel free to pick holes and point me in the right direction.

A bit of background and requirements:
Their new machine/s will be running W7 (I think)
Their email host is demon and they want to keep their current email address
They are currently using thunderbird but want to return to a microsoft client

I don't trust them for regular backups so need to have an online/offsite backup
As they will be wanting to get a second machine at some point, ideally they will have access from both
It needs to be easy to setup remotely

1 - My first thought was to use Live Mail as a client and stick the .pst in a Drop Box folder. To me it sounds simple but I have seen some reports of the files being locked or corrupted.

2 - Next was to use Live Mail and have it forward every email to a gmail account (or similar) that would only be used in a disaster. Not sure how this could work over more than one machine though as Live Mail is Local.

3 - Use Gmail as an intermediary, collecting from the host and accessed from both machines with Live Mail. Not sure how easy this would be to setup, or how easy it would be for them to break it.


I haven't used Live Mail so will be happy to recommend against it if that is the concensus.
Also I'm not aware of the capacity and IMAP capability of their host Demon.

TIA

I've used Live Mail on some works PC where they needed a separate pop account for another company we look after in UK and it is pretty easy to set-up and use - and it is free!

Failing that my parents use fsmail http://fsmail03.orange.co.uk/webmail/en_GB/login.html which is totally web-based so you can view/write emails anywhere in the world as long as you can get on the net.

EDIT: I see they want to keep their existing email address so you could use Live Mail to set-up the account and put it on divert to something like fsmail?

Won't a pop account have trouble being synced over two machines?

I have all emails forwarded to my gmail, which then syncs with all my clients using IMAP. You can set gmail to send as other email addresses, and fetch from them if forwarding isn't an option. It works seamlessly.

Live doesn't use a pst file btw. Unless it's changed in the last few months, it uses separate files for each email.

That would be option 3 then JJ?

Just to picture it:

Incoming Mail -> Demon -> Gmail IMAP -> 2 clients with Live Mail IMAP -> Gmail IMAP-> Outgoing mail with ***@demon email address


I can't remember the exact trouble I had last time I tried to sync Outlook with Gmail, I just gave up. I just hope it would be as easy as it looks. My parents would be very unlikely to access the gmail part of the process so that may help.

I would be tempted for a belt and braces approach and have gmail forward all mail to a second gmail account.

Something tells me using gmail may ruffle my mum's tinfoil hat.

Yes, option 3. Process sounds about right. Once it's all set up, you can rename the account on Live so it says Demon. The only actual sign of gmail would be hidden in the account settings.

Even my mum uses Gmail to capture her old email accounts. However, my mum doesn't have a tin foil hat! She's just happy that it works.

Surprised that you had problems with GMail