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Ask Dr. Dopolis - Q4 (Sept. 25, 2000)

Dr. Dopolis is our on-staff "Technology Psychotherapist." Dr. Dopolis helps heal the relationships between users and their technology. We consider him one of the top (not to mention the only) Technology-Psychotherapists in the world.

One reader writes . . .

Dear Dr. Dopolis,

My email won’t work with XRay Vision, or my XRay Vision won’t work with my email. I’m not sure which, but my email works, and so it’s got to be that XRay Vision won’t work with my email. Why is that?

Signed, Isolated

Dear Isolated,

There are a number of reasons why you might be having problems with XRay Vision and your email. The first thing that comes to mind is that you may be using proprietary software for sending and receiving email - something like AOL (for an explanation of that problem, see my new book Outlook is from Mars, AOL is from Another Galaxy). AOL takes care of all the SMTP and POP settings for you, and doesn’t tell XRay Vision what it’s done. So naturally, XRay Vision will have some trouble with the emailing. You see, it’s basically a language problem. Similar to when an English speaking person meets a French speaking person. They both try to communicate, but they speak two separate languages. So in this case, you will have to act as the translator. You would need to manually configure these settings in a program such as Eudora or Outlook Express.

You may also need to set up both SETTINGS>>INTERNET & DIALUP SETTINGS and SETTINGS>>SERVER EVENTS to have XRay Vision automatically send email. Under INTERNET & DIALUP SETTINGS, go to CONNECTION and set your connection. (If you use a LAN for Internet access, select it here.) You should have a drop-down box for anything configured in Dial-up Networking in Windows. If you don't see your connection, it needs to be manually configured in Dial-up Networking. (If we choose to further explore your issues with Dial-Up networking, we will need to schedule that for another session.)

INTERNET & DIALUP SETTINGS is also where you set the basics of the email function in XRay Vision. You can select TO and FROM addresses, either manually or through browsing your Contacts List.

For sending email automatically, you need to configure SETTINGS>>SERVER

EVENTS>>SEND EMAIL. Here you set the criteria for when XRay Vision should email.

One of those options should work for you. I know that I have done most of the talking today in our session, but today I felt as if I must act as a teacher more than a therapist. So your homework for this evening is to try out those options, thereby teaching your software each other’s language. And don’t worry, technology learns much more quickly than we do. Instead of months or years of going over the lessons, technology will pick it up in seconds. So off you go…

And Remember, technology is your friend.

Dr. Dopolis.

If you have a question for Dr. Dopolis, then send him an email at  xzone@x10.com