I was a time-warner road runner customer and they sold out to Spectrum. Spectrum jacked my bill up $40 so I'm looking to switch. At the same time, Northstate ran fiberoptic cable down my street, so I'm going to switch to them. I was going to maintain my spectrum account for three months after the switch to make sure all of my contacts can get through to me.
Has anyone had any experience doing this? Will I still be able to use Thunderbird (I love it!)? Will I be able to archive my inbox from Spectrum and carry my contacts over to Northstate?
Switching from Spectrum
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tanstaafl
- Moderator
- Posts: 49647
- Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm
Re: Switching from Spectrum
Copy the already downloaded mail from the spectrum account to the "Local Folders" account. Add the Northstate account. Copy the mail from Local Folders to the Northgate account. Wait a week to verify everything is okay and then delete the Spectrum account. Your contacts (within Thunderbird) are not account specific. You should be fine.
Usually the only question is does the ISP support both POP and IMAP or just IMAP accounts. If the new account wizard says that the Mozilla ISP database couldn't find any settings for Northstate you need to manually set them (in the wizard). Your ISP might not have instructions for Thunderbird but its usually pretty easy to adapt instructions from Outlook or Outlook Express. Don't rely upon "auto-detect", that doesn't work well.
However, I recommend that rather than using your ISP as your email provider you add a Gmail IMAP account since ISPs typically view email as just a cost center. You will have a lot more space, much better spam protection and you can keep the same email address the next time you change ISPs. Google scans your email to let it personalize ads but most email providers do that, and it can only display those ads if you are using a browser. Gmail is a little more complicated to setup but its extremely popular so it always gets good support from the Thunderbird developers, and its easy to get help for it in this forum. I never heard of NorthState before .
Outlook.com is another possibility but it keeps having periodic problems (slow performance or can't see folders) that effect people not using a Microsoft email client. Yahoo and AOL are poor email providers IMHO. Their being bought by Verizon doesn't help.
Typically you can register a contact email address with your ISP in the webmail settings so that they can contact you if you don't use them as a email provider.
See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Gmail
Usually the only question is does the ISP support both POP and IMAP or just IMAP accounts. If the new account wizard says that the Mozilla ISP database couldn't find any settings for Northstate you need to manually set them (in the wizard). Your ISP might not have instructions for Thunderbird but its usually pretty easy to adapt instructions from Outlook or Outlook Express. Don't rely upon "auto-detect", that doesn't work well.
However, I recommend that rather than using your ISP as your email provider you add a Gmail IMAP account since ISPs typically view email as just a cost center. You will have a lot more space, much better spam protection and you can keep the same email address the next time you change ISPs. Google scans your email to let it personalize ads but most email providers do that, and it can only display those ads if you are using a browser. Gmail is a little more complicated to setup but its extremely popular so it always gets good support from the Thunderbird developers, and its easy to get help for it in this forum. I never heard of NorthState before .
Outlook.com is another possibility but it keeps having periodic problems (slow performance or can't see folders) that effect people not using a Microsoft email client. Yahoo and AOL are poor email providers IMHO. Their being bought by Verizon doesn't help.
Typically you can register a contact email address with your ISP in the webmail settings so that they can contact you if you don't use them as a email provider.
See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Gmail
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woodwoman2
- Posts: 2
- Joined: June 3rd, 2017, 3:41 pm
Re: Switching from Spectrum
Thanks tanstaafl! I've got a gmail account that I use on my android. I use my phone or a desktop for internet surfing and I can get an address that's very similar to the one I've had for 13 years. The tens of millions of people on gmail preclude that. I use my address for my business and I'm 58. It's unlikely I'll move in the next several years and northstate offers the fastest internet available, which I need.
I might call technical support in advance of the switch and ask them to tell me more about how it's set up, so I'm prepared. I'll be following your directions too, they are much appreciated.
I might call technical support in advance of the switch and ask them to tell me more about how it's set up, so I'm prepared. I'll be following your directions too, they are much appreciated.