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[OCLUG-Tech] Embarassing need for help ...

All:

I've lived exclusively in the Linux world for so long that I've lost a lot of my ability to work in other environments without going insane. I recently had to help an elderly neighbor (86!) configure his XP box for a new Sympatico DSL install, and it was hellish. The Sympatico install CD was so dumbed down it did everything in the background, installing all kinds of unnecessary crap, without actually conveying any facts or information. Lovely Flash progress bars did put on a show though!

MSN, Yahoo toolbars, MST.net accounts, logins stored by MSN, home page highjacking - what a load of crap. There's a bunch of Active-X crap going on in Internet Exploder that looks suspicious.

I was in the process of trying to extract my neighbor from the clutches of Lookout Express, moving him to Thunderbird and Firefox (this is the FLOSS part of the discussion for the list police), and discovered I knew nothing about Sympatico server names, login methods (SSL, TLS, etc.), authentication (secure?) etc.

During the "magical" installation process I created a default email account that works via the MSN webmail, and works in the magically-altered Outlook Express. Trying to set the same parameters in Thunderbird doesn't appear to work - I get rejected from the server.

Anyone know what Pathetico settings are necessary to talk to:

POP3
SMTP

Thanks in advance.

--
Bill Strosberg