Member Account, plus upgrades??

DianeB · 27 Nov 2003, 02:51 PM

If I'm reading the Membership levels correctly, one can purchase a 'Member' account for a 'one time fee' of $14.95. Does this mean that you keep the member account forever, for only a ONE time fee? No annual renewal, no extra charge, ever?

If so, then can you purchase the additional 100MB storage space for a ONE time fee of $24.95. And this 100MB stays forever, with no additional charges to it? No annual renewal fees? The same with Extra Transfer, a ONE time fee of $14.00/GB? No renewal, no additional fees? Never expires?

And DUH me, I don't know, so could someone tell me what difference there is in a MB & a GB ??

I'm still debating on which plan would be best for me, so any input here is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!!

Diane

I hope I posted this to the correct forum,,, ,,, if not, someone please advise.

David · 27 Nov 2003, 03:22 PM

Hi Diane. The answer to all your questions is yes Fastmail is a good deal... No?

But the extra transfer is used up... When it is gone, it is gone...

**Sherry** · 27 Nov 2003, 03:30 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by DianeB
The same with Extra Transfer, a ONE time fee of $14.00/GB? No renewal, no additional fees? Never expires?

I believe the Extra Transfer is a little different. That will get used up until you need to buy more. What they mean by not expiring is, you don't lose it at the end of the month. It's kind of like a savings account. If you spend your check you can draw some from your savings until it's gone.

By the way, did you read the other thread you started? The guys came up with a way for you to do a quick copy/paste to the BCC from excel.

A MB is sort of like a Million and GB is like a Billion

Sherry

EDIT: sorry David. I didn't notice you already answered about the transfer being used up.

DianeB · 27 Nov 2003, 03:52 PM

I'm still so amazed at the FAST replies when I make a post!!

To clarify, if the 'Member' account is only the ONE time fee, for a lifetime, & I can upgrade (especially) my storage space, then what would the purpose be in opting for the next level that carries an annual renewal fee, except for some of the extra's it offers, that I don't know that I would need.

If I did upgrade to a "Full" account, if that expired, then I wouldn't have the lifetime benefits that the 'Member' account offers, correct??

Sherry,
Yes, I did read the solutions on my other thread,,,,,,,,,I tried them out, but they didn't work for me.

However, I've not had time to go back & try again, as perhaps I missed something, or was doing something wrong. I don't have excel, (at least as far as I know, I don't). I use a microsoft spreadsheet. Don't know if that makes a difference or not.

When I get the time, I'll go back to it & try, try, again, as that would be a HUGE time saver for me! And I certainly appreciate all the folks that worked at trying to give me a solution. I'm sure once I find time to work on it again, there should be some way I can get it to work for me, as you said it worked great the last way you tried it out.

Thanks!
Diane

David · 27 Nov 2003, 04:05 PM

Diane. If you open a member account and then upgrade to a full (or an enhanced account) later on. When you drop the full (or enhanced) option you will fall back to member status... Or. You can buy a full or enhanced account now (and not bother with a member account) But, if you do that you will fall back to guest...

DianeB · 27 Nov 2003, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Diane. If you open a member account and then upgrade to a full (or an enhanced account) later on. When you drop the full (or enhanced) option you will fall back to member status... Or. You can buy a full or enhanced account now (and not bother with a member account) But, if you do that you will fall back to guest...

David--
Thanks,,,,,,,,,that is exactly the info I needed. It only makes sense to me, to open the member account first, then if I want, upgrade, knowing I can always drop back to the member account that only cost a one time fee for life.

It's after 3a.m. for me, so I'm off for tonight.

Thanks bunches for helping me out.

Diane

kander · 27 Nov 2003, 06:28 PM

Hi Diane,

Sorry I wasn't awake earlier, hence the late reply

The benefit of a Full over Guest is the higher limits, use of SpamAssassin, larger addressbook, Personal Support (through mail, in addition to this forum should you ever need it), POP3 Access (but IMAP is better anyway

), it allows you 3 aliases (which you know all about now, right?) and the option to purchase additional aliases, you can have a shorter username, an enormous mailbox (50 MB), your account doesn't expire after not logging in (120 days for Member), you can have addressbook groups that are not limited (member has a maximum of 10 entries per group) and if you're feeling adventurous it also allows you to use your own domain. Phew. You can review this info at the pricing table

A Gigabyte is 1024*1 Megabyte.

--K

DianeB · 29 Nov 2003, 03:49 AM

Thanks for all the info guys/gals.

I'm still thinking it better to first get the member account (since it NEVER expires) then do an upgrade from there. That way should the dear ole memory forget to renew, at least I'd still have an account. BTW,,,,,,,do they send renewal notices out? I would never ever remember when its time to renew!!

But of course, a few more questions again,,,,,,,

kander, thanks for the: A Gigabyte is 1024*1 Megabyte. DUH me, still doesn't understand. I now grasp the concept of the approx. size of 50MB. How much space would 1 GB be in correspondence to a MB? (I tried doing the math here, but the brain isn't operating correctly--too much turkey maybe? LOL)

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm understanding that an 'alias' is pretty much like an additional email. In the sense that I could give a person an alias if I didn't want them to have my regular email address, yet it would still reach my FM mailbox?

Now, can anyone tell me what would be the pros of getting a personal domain?? I checked on godaddy & seems they have some very very inexpensive ones, but I don't understand what purpose one might be for me.

My biggest ?? I'm afraid no one can answer. That is, my oh my, what NAME do I use to set up my new email account with!! There's sooooooo many options, making it become soooooooo many tough decisions!!

Thanks again to all who replied here, & I'm going over to my other post to thank the nice folks there, just incase I forgot to thank everyone. I'm so in awe of this wonderful forum & I've emailed my sister nightly about it. She doesn't use her pc near as much as I do, so doesn't need quite what I do. She has signed up for a Guest account. She mainly uses her pc for games, contests, freebies, & only a handful of personal emails. She doesn't understand near the amount of things on a pc that I do, so that puts her even further in the dark. (though as you can see, there's MUCH that I don't understand myself). But she's pretty good at following directions & FAQ boards. Her only downfall with FM, is in not being able to enlarge the font when she is composing email. (she's older than I am, thus even poorer eyesight! LOL)

Diane

robert@fm · 29 Nov 2003, 05:02 AM

Explaining Gb again...

Humans count by tens, so in human terms "kilo" means 10^3 (that is, three tens multiplied together), which is 1,000.  "Mega" means 10^6, or 1,000,000.  "Giga" means 10^9, or 1,000,000,000.

Computers count by twos internally, so that's how computer memory is organised; to minimise confusion, the computer terms are the nearest 2-based equivalents to the human ones.  Thus, "kilo"=2^10=1,024; "mega"=2^20=1,048,576 (which of course means that 1Mb=1024Kb); "giga"=2^30=1,073,741,824.

(Hard drive sizes are often advertised somewhat dishonestly, which is why Windows reports a so-called "40Gb" drive to be 38Gb; Windows is reporting the size correctly.)

I hope this clarifies things rather than confusing them.

ewal · 29 Nov 2003, 06:51 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by DianeB

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm understanding that an 'alias' is pretty much like an additional email. In the sense that I could give a person an alias if I didn't want them to have my regular email address, yet it would still reach my FM mailbox?

Yep that's right Diane, simply another incoming email address that you can hand out to people with email arriving in your fastmail account. You could, if you want, file alias emails into separate folders - or even forward them elsewhere.

Once you get the hang of aliases you will soon be wanting to know about sub-domain and plus addressing where you can create literially an infinite amount of emails addresses. And also personalities where you can 'appear' to be thousands of different - erm - personalities.

But take things one step at a time - your plan of getting a member account and then upgrading from there when the need arises is a good plan.

You never know - what with the holiday season coming up you may find you upgrade sooner than you plan.

all the best
Edward

pwb · 29 Nov 2003, 09:18 AM

So 1GB is just about 20 times larger than 50MB.

NumberSix · 29 Nov 2003, 03:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by DianeB
Now, can anyone tell me what would be the pros of getting a personal domain?? I checked on godaddy & seems they have some very very inexpensive ones, but I don't understand what purpose one might be for me.

Having your own domain means that you are never tied down to any given service provider. If you use an email address @ one of Fastmail's domains, you are dependent on them, to some extent. Even if you wanted to cancel your FM account and go to a different provider (g*dferbid

), you're faced with the fact that many people know your FM address and they will have to be informed of your new address. And each time you change providers (entailing change of email address) you go through the hassle over again. With your own domain, you can change the provider who's servicing your domain without changing your email address ever again (in theory).

Quote:

My biggest ?? I'm afraid no one can answer. That is, my oh my, what NAME do I use to set up my new email account with!! There's sooooooo many options, making it become soooooooo many tough decisions!!

I assume you mean what username. I'd like to suggest you pick something not too short, definitely not in the dictionary, not imaginable by someone who doesn't know you, and not even something that suggests your real name. But maybe you're not as paranoid about privacy as I am

Oh, and I know others have already answered, but I can't resist giving the simplest and most useful answer to your other question: a gigabyte (GB) is 1000 times bigger than a megabyte (MB). Why can't it be this simple, guys?

DianeB · 29 Nov 2003, 04:13 PM

Once again, thanks to all who have replied.

NumberSix:

Thanks for the explanation about domains. Now that I understand it a bit better, thus far, I don't see any reason for me to go that extra bit. From what I have learned this past week, I do believe that I will stick with FM.

BTW,,,folks on this thread don't know, but it was just a bit over a week ago that I even found out about 'email servers'. I was having problems in not receiving all of my emails & thought the ONLY solution would be changing ISP's. I was doing some research & happened to find something about FM, that lead me to do further research on it, thus so many different questions. I'm totally delighted to know that I don't have to change ISP's, and won't have to worry about lost emails, since they will all go through FM now. And I'm willing to bet almost everyone I deal with, are in the dark as to 'email servers' just like I was. I had no earthly idea any such thing existed. All of us little peons in my computer world, know the basics & only learn new things by accidently stumbling on something or word of mouth. Not only did I not know 'email servers' existed, how they worked, but the beauty of how inexpensive FM is. And another thing that has sold me, is this wonderful forum where so many people donate their time & knowledge in helping others like myself. And I will definitely be spreading the word to my friends & business contacts.

No, I don't want to use anything with my real name, though I don't mind using part of my initials. So now I'll have to sit here for days, making the tough decision of what to make my permanent email addy here, as I want it to be something that I won't decide 3 months later, I don't like. And I also like the fact that there are so many options 'after' setting up my permanent addy.

Quote:

Oh, and I know others have already answered, but I can't resist giving the simplest and most useful answer to your other question: a gigabyte (GB) is 1000 times bigger than a megabyte (MB). Why can't it be this simple, guys?

Thank YOU 100% !! For those like me, that only know a tad over the 'basics' of pc usage, your explanation is by far the best!!
Diane

29 Nov 2003, 06:00 PM

I'm wondering....

Are the higher levels of account of benefit primarily if you almost exclusively use the web interface. I am in the (very slow) process of signing-up/upgrading to a member or full account. But to me it seems that if I was to use the member account and use Outlook Express rather then the web interface I could get the same benefits as if I were to subscribe to a full or enhanced account.

Let me explain. If I use OE there is no limit on the address book, if I use OE I'm sure I could setup basic aliases, I could use a freeware spam filter instead of SpamAssasin. The benefits of upgrading are of course the increased support and mb allowance limits.

Cheers,
dan

Heartz · 30 Nov 2003, 07:08 AM

Just so that you know, the cheapest domain reseller now is ev1servers.net. It costs only USD 5.41 per year and is on Tucows - which is a highly reliable registrar.

27 Nov 2003, 02:51 PM	#1
DianeB Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: USA-South Carolina Posts: 503	Member Account, plus upgrades?? If I'm reading the Membership levels correctly, one can purchase a 'Member' account for a 'one time fee' of $14.95. Does this mean that you keep the member account forever, for only a ONE time fee? No annual renewal, no extra charge, ever? If so, then can you purchase the additional 100MB storage space for a ONE time fee of $24.95. And this 100MB stays forever, with no additional charges to it? No annual renewal fees? The same with Extra Transfer, a ONE time fee of $14.00/GB? No renewal, no additional fees? Never expires? And DUH me, I don't know, so could someone tell me what difference there is in a MB & a GB ?? I'm still debating on which plan would be best for me, so any input here is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!! Diane I hope I posted this to the correct forum,,, ,,, if not, someone please advise. Last edited by DianeB : 27 Nov 2003 at 03:08 PM.

27 Nov 2003, 03:22 PM	#2
David Ultimate Contributor Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Canada. Posts: 10,355	Hi Diane. The answer to all your questions is yes Fastmail is a good deal... No? But the extra transfer is used up... When it is gone, it is gone...

27 Nov 2003, 03:52 PM	#4
DianeB Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: USA-South Carolina Posts: 503	I'm still so amazed at the FAST replies when I make a post!! To clarify, if the 'Member' account is only the ONE time fee, for a lifetime, & I can upgrade (especially) my storage space, then what would the purpose be in opting for the next level that carries an annual renewal fee, except for some of the extra's it offers, that I don't know that I would need. If I did upgrade to a "Full" account, if that expired, then I wouldn't have the lifetime benefits that the 'Member' account offers, correct?? Sherry, Yes, I did read the solutions on my other thread,,,,,,,,,I tried them out, but they didn't work for me. However, I've not had time to go back & try again, as perhaps I missed something, or was doing something wrong. I don't have excel, (at least as far as I know, I don't). I use a microsoft spreadsheet. Don't know if that makes a difference or not. When I get the time, I'll go back to it & try, try, again, as that would be a HUGE time saver for me! And I certainly appreciate all the folks that worked at trying to give me a solution. I'm sure once I find time to work on it again, there should be some way I can get it to work for me, as you said it worked great the last way you tried it out. Thanks! Diane

27 Nov 2003, 04:05 PM	#5
David Ultimate Contributor Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Canada. Posts: 10,355	Diane. If you open a member account and then upgrade to a full (or an enhanced account) later on. When you drop the full (or enhanced) option you will fall back to member status... Or. You can buy a full or enhanced account now (and not bother with a member account) But, if you do that you will fall back to guest...

27 Nov 2003, 06:28 PM	#7
kander The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 4,112	Hi Diane, Sorry I wasn't awake earlier, hence the late reply The benefit of a Full over Guest is the higher limits, use of SpamAssassin, larger addressbook, Personal Support (through mail, in addition to this forum should you ever need it), POP3 Access (but IMAP is better anyway ), it allows you 3 aliases (which you know all about now, right?) and the option to purchase additional aliases, you can have a shorter username, an enormous mailbox (50 MB), your account doesn't expire after not logging in (120 days for Member), you can have addressbook groups that are not limited (member has a maximum of 10 entries per group) and if you're feeling adventurous it also allows you to use your own domain. Phew. You can review this info at the pricing table A Gigabyte is 1024*1 Megabyte. --K

29 Nov 2003, 03:49 AM	#8
DianeB Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: USA-South Carolina Posts: 503	Thanks for all the info guys/gals. I'm still thinking it better to first get the member account (since it NEVER expires) then do an upgrade from there. That way should the dear ole memory forget to renew, at least I'd still have an account. BTW,,,,,,,do they send renewal notices out? I would never ever remember when its time to renew!! But of course, a few more questions again,,,,,,, kander, thanks for the: A Gigabyte is 1024*1 Megabyte. DUH me, still doesn't understand. I now grasp the concept of the approx. size of 50MB. How much space would 1 GB be in correspondence to a MB? (I tried doing the math here, but the brain isn't operating correctly--too much turkey maybe? LOL) Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm understanding that an 'alias' is pretty much like an additional email. In the sense that I could give a person an alias if I didn't want them to have my regular email address, yet it would still reach my FM mailbox? Now, can anyone tell me what would be the pros of getting a personal domain?? I checked on godaddy & seems they have some very very inexpensive ones, but I don't understand what purpose one might be for me. My biggest ?? I'm afraid no one can answer. That is, my oh my, what NAME do I use to set up my new email account with!! There's sooooooo many options, making it become soooooooo many tough decisions!! Thanks again to all who replied here, & I'm going over to my other post to thank the nice folks there, just incase I forgot to thank everyone. I'm so in awe of this wonderful forum & I've emailed my sister nightly about it. She doesn't use her pc near as much as I do, so doesn't need quite what I do. She has signed up for a Guest account. She mainly uses her pc for games, contests, freebies, & only a handful of personal emails. She doesn't understand near the amount of things on a pc that I do, so that puts her even further in the dark. (though as you can see, there's MUCH that I don't understand myself). But she's pretty good at following directions & FAQ boards. Her only downfall with FM, is in not being able to enlarge the font when she is composing email. (she's older than I am, thus even poorer eyesight! LOL) Diane

29 Nov 2003, 05:02 AM	#9
robert@fm The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: London, UK Posts: 4,681	Explaining Gb again... Humans count by tens, so in human terms "kilo" means 10^3 (that is, three tens multiplied together), which is 1,000.  "Mega" means 10^6, or 1,000,000.  "Giga" means 10^9, or 1,000,000,000. Computers count by twos internally, so that's how computer memory is organised; to minimise confusion, the computer terms are the nearest 2-based equivalents to the human ones.  Thus, "kilo"=2^10=1,024; "mega"=2^20=1,048,576 (which of course means that 1Mb=1024Kb); "giga"=2^30=1,073,741,824. (Hard drive sizes are often advertised somewhat dishonestly, which is why Windows reports a so-called "40Gb" drive to be 38Gb; Windows is reporting the size correctly.) I hope this clarifies things rather than confusing them.

29 Nov 2003, 09:18 AM	#11
pwb Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: York, UK Posts: 101	So 1GB is just about 20 times larger than 50MB.

29 Nov 2003, 06:00 PM	#14
Guest Posts: n/a	I'm wondering.... Are the higher levels of account of benefit primarily if you almost exclusively use the web interface. I am in the (very slow) process of signing-up/upgrading to a member or full account. But to me it seems that if I was to use the member account and use Outlook Express rather then the web interface I could get the same benefits as if I were to subscribe to a full or enhanced account. Let me explain. If I use OE there is no limit on the address book, if I use OE I'm sure I could setup basic aliases, I could use a freeware spam filter instead of SpamAssasin. The benefits of upgrading are of course the increased support and mb allowance limits. Cheers, dan

30 Nov 2003, 07:08 AM	#15
Heartz Essential Contributor Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Selangor, Malaysia Posts: 460	Just so that you know, the cheapest domain reseller now is ev1servers.net. It costs only USD 5.41 per year and is on Tucows - which is a highly reliable registrar.