Thanks for all the tips guys, certainly using a browser for email would be a solution, as Internet Explorer seems to work (with reservations! see below). Normally I curse IMAP (browser) email as a couple of guys who use it here tend to tie up the connection when others want it, and I can get my POP3 email in seconds/minutes and deal with it offline - of course, that would not be a problem if we are all online with a sharing system!
We have discovered a big problem with the "box" - it needs a static IP address from our ISP, and that is usually only available to customers with a leased line (our "deal" is for a dial-up line with unlimited hours) So the system seems to work "sometimes", if the IP address that we use is not allocated to another user at that time - but if the line drops, or if we disconnect, then the IP address can get allocated to somebody else and we can't get back in! Now to try to get the ISP to give us a static IP (I hope!)
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What Goes Around . . . . .
. . often makes a better landing
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BTW - I haven't noticed ZoneAlarm popping up to tell me I'm being "pinged" since we instaled the device, so I switched off ZoneAlarm and checked the machine out with Steve Gibson's probe (www.grc.com) and the "IP translation" function of the box seems to work well as a firewall too
[This message has been edited by ExSimGuy (edited 24 January 2001).]