Digest Option

Filters

Separate Pop E-mail Account

Check/Search Archives

Newsgroups

 

• You can choose a 'Digest' format on some mail lists, such as PB-L and PBHelp. However, the pfcsig and pfc-users do not (and probably will not) provide this option for budget and maintenance reasons. The 'Digest' option is useful for people who basically enjoy auditing, rather than actively participating in, the mail lists. This is because the 'Digest' option makes it a little inconvenient to repond to the notes.

• You can take advantage of some E-mail options to auto-route certain messages to a separate folder. These are sometimes called 'Filters'. Netscape 4.0 supports filters, and not only is it slick-o, but it's free. Here's more on this topic, from Boris Gasin... "Take a look if the email package you are using at work supports filters. Eudora ($50), Pegasus (free), Outlook, all can automatically filter the messages from the SIG and file them in a separate folder. This makes replying to individual messages easier than with the digest version."

• You can set up a separate pop E-mail account that is used solely for subscribing to such lists. Your existing ISP can set you up a separate pop account, usually at no extra charge. Also, as Kevin Ridley points out... "then you can check it at your leisure. There are several free email sites out there (Hotmail.com, Rocketmail.com, etc.). If everyone did that, we'd never have to worry about someone's autoreply ("I'm on vacation ...) crashing the server."

• You can simply check the archives daily (or whenever). Or maybe you could just go search the archives when you have a question. Just depends on your wants and needs.

• You can subscribe to the Powersoft Newsgroups. They are better in this respect where you can poll them at your convenience; you don't get the messages actually sent to you. The messages stay on your ISP's server so they do not take up space on your PC... and they are all kept there on the server so you may always refer back to them. Also, you can scan the Subjects, just looking for topics of interest to you, and ignore the rest. This is even easier because the messages are divided up by category. The Team Powersoft and Powersoft techies monitor and respond back to these posts. And, it is easy for you to post and/or respond back to these messages. When you are done, then you can just mark all of the messages as read and be done with it. The drawbacks are that some people do not have access to any/Powersoft Newsgroups at work or through their ISP. But you can always request it, and chances are high that they will add it.