Reading E-mail at CSE

There are a number of programs for reading and sending Email available at CSE. They are called Email Clients and also Mail User Agents or MUAs. The client you choose will depend on the features you want and the circumstances under which you expect to read email. You will need to decide whether:

you will mostly be reading CSE email on the CSE system or reading it from other systems
you want a text-based or graphical client.

GUI Clients

Clients that run in a graphical desktop environment (GUI Clients) tend to be slower and much less portable but they offer integrated graphics and thus 'look better' to many people. They also tend to make looking at attachments easier. GUI clients include:

thunderbird - Mozilla Thunderbird
evolution - Gnome Evolution linux only
Outlook Express - Windows only

For the graphical and Windows clients, you should configure your client to read mail Using IMAP.

Text-based Clients

If you will mostly be reading your CSE email on a CSE linux computer and want something fast and light, go for one of the text-based clients such as:

mutt
pine
mail - rather too simple for everyday use but good in scripts

Advantages of text-based clients are:

they can be used without having to start an X session: for instance, when you've ssh'd in from another computer;
they have many more configuration options than GUI-based clients;
they can be used in scripts and cronjobs;
they are impervious to most of the exploits that afflict GUI-based clients.

Mail Clients that use IMAP will use mail folders in your home directory and so will test-based clients. These will typically be your .incoming-mail file and in your mail directory. This means you can read your email from home with an IMAP client and quickly check your email at CSE using mutt.

Getting your email on a Web Browser

We also have a WebMail system, using SquirrelMail. You also have full access to web-based free email providers such as Yahoo or Gmail in the CSE laboratories.

CSE Webmail uses IMAP to read your email so it will show you the same email that another IMAP client would.

Redirecting Email to an External Mail Account

Another option is to Redirect your mail to another provider, for example UniMail. Email to undergraduate students redirects to their UNSW student account by default.

CSE POP Service

If you have a special requirement to use POP to collect email read the document Using POP - however this should be avoided unless you really can't use IMAP.

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