Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

OWC: Mercury On-The-Go FW800+USB2 up to 1.0TB. Bus Powered, no external power supply needed. Macworld Editors Choice, CNET Very Good Starting from $99.97, 500GB $159.99. Click here

Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

A New Anti-Spam Weapon: POPmonitor 2

Charles Moore - 2002.04.22 - Tip Jar

Spam keeps getting worse, and in the past six months or so the volume of spam I receive seems to have quadrupled. I have about 20 email accounts, and while some are virtually spam-free, others are attracting a persistent onslaught of junk mail.

The worst is my oldest email account - the one I have with my ISP. One alternative would be to just change my email address, but so many people have that address (which is presumably why it has become such spam magnet) that it would be a hassle to notify everyone of a change, and I would doubtless miss some not-frequent correspondents.

Another workaround has been using Nisus Email as my email client for that account. Nisus has the happy facility of allowing you to preview messages on the server and to delete unwanted ones without downloading them - an extra step, but a net timesaver when you're on a slow, dialup connection like I am.

However, it still rankles, and lately I have been getting between 50 and 100 spam messages daily on that account. It's frustrating to just sit there and take this barrage of garbage from pornmongers and get rich quick scammers and purveyors of Viagra and breast augmentation. The banality and idiocy of spam adds insult to injury.

For the past week or so, I've been checking out POPmonitor, a freestanding email utility that lets you check your mail box, preview messages, and delete messages from the server without downloading them. And best of all, to bounce unwanted messages back to the sender. "There. Take that, you miserable scum-suckers."

Unfortunately, quite a few of the fake bounces bounce right back at you, but I figure it's still worth a shot, and I'll be interested to see whether after a few weeks of bouncing messages, the volume of spam will diminish at all.

When first you launch POPmonitor, the Configuration Assistant will help you configure your first account. Then you just login to your mailbox, select the unwanted messages and click Delete. The new 2.0 version of POPmonitor also lets you bounce messages and automate the removal of spam by creating custom filters. You can also automate the removal of unwanted messages by creating lists of trusted and blocked senders and by creating custom filters based on several criteria.

You can configure POPmonitor to automatically delete messages from blocked senders or automatically delete messages that match any filter, and set POPmonitor to switch to your email application after POPmonitor has checked and filtered your mailbox. POPmonitor will first remove any unwanted messages from your mailbox and then tell your email application to receive the remaining messages.

You can display selected messages in separate windows. POPmonitor will not show the entire message; it just downloads part of it. You can specify the size of the downloaded part in the Account Settings window under Read X lines of the message body.

You can also save selected messages to your hard disk.

To bounce messages, click the bounce button, and the the selected message(s) will be sent back to the sender, thereby simulating a non-existing email address. POPmonitor will send a message saying that your email account no longer exists on your ISP's server.

POPmonitor can also act as an automatic filter between your ISP's mailbox and your email application, check and filter your mailbox at scheduled intervals, and afterwards instruct your email application to receive the remaining messages.

The POPmonitor application is a relatively modest 3 MB in size, but it wants at least 5 MB of memory with Virtual Memory turned on, and it prefers 7.5 MB (or 8.8 MB with VM turned off), which might be a caveat if you don't have a lot of RAM.

I've found it rock-stable and unbuggy so far. It works great.

System requirements:

Any Macintosh computer with a PowerPC processor
A connection to the Internet or a local network
Mac OS 8.x, Mac OS 9.x (This version of POPmonitor runs in Classic mode under Mac OS X. An OS X native version will be available in May.)
AppleScript (to communicate with your email application)

POPmonitor includes a 19-page user's manual and troubleshooting guide in PDF format.

POPmonitor is $25 shareware. The unregistered version of POPmonitor lets you create one mail account, three trusted senders, three blocked senders and three custom filters. After registering you can create an unlimited number of each.

Charles Moore has been a freelance journalist since 1987 and began writing for Mac websites in May 1998. His The Road Warrior column is a regular feature on MacOpinion, and he is a news editor and columnist at Applelinks.com. If you find his articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

Recent Miscellaneous Ramblings

Soft Touch Keyboards, Wireless Mouse Options, Loving SeaMonkey 2, and More, 11.18. Also the future of browsing with PowerPC Macs and the multiple mouse input bug introduced with OS X 10.5.8.
4 Mac Browsers Updated Recently, 11.16. A look at the release version of Safari 4.0.4 and preview versions of Firefox 3.6, Chrome 4.0, and Opera 10.10.
More Mighty Mouse Alternatives, Wireless Safety, Switching to ClipMenu, and More, 11.11. Also Apple's AirPort Card as the best solution for Pismo, Color It and Snow Leopard, and later revision Mac OS X install discs.
Putting the SeaMonkey 2.0 Internet Suite Through Its Paces, 11.09. SeaMonkey is the successor to Netscape Navigator with its browser, email and news clients, and HTML editor. Version 2.0 puts it on par with Firefox 3.5.
More in the Miscellaneous Ramblings index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: iMac Core Duo, Jan. 2006 - The first Intel-based iMacs ran at 1.83-2.0 GHz, came with 17" and 20" displays.
Group of the Day: Mac Pro List is for those using a Mac Pro.
November 23 in LEM history: 99: Should I buy a USB card? - 01: Can a low-end Mac be an only Mac? - Palm Desktop without a PDA - CyberDog saves the day - 05: How Consumer Reports could compare Macs fairly - Speakers for your Mac - Living with the hi-res 15" PowerBook - Birth of the PowerBook - Daystar 1.9 GHz iMac G4 upgrade - 1.92 GHz PowerBook upgrade
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

Best eMac Deals, 11.18. Used 1 GHz Combo, $100; SuperDrive, $269; 1.25 GHz Combo, $119; SD, $319; 1.42 GHz Combo, $289; SD, $498.
Best Mac OS X 10.6 and Mac Box Set Deals, 11.18. "Snow Leopard", single user, $25; 5 users, $45; Mac Box Set, single user, $139; 5 users, $180; Server, $414. Shipping included.
Best Xserve Deals, 11.18. Used 1 GHz dual G4, $649; 2.3 dual G5, $795; 3.0 4-core Xeon, $1,899; refurb 2.26 4-core, $2,499; new, $2,888; refurb 8-core, $2,999; new, $3,449; more.
Best 15" MacBook Pro Deals, 11.17. Used 1.83 GHz, $750; 2.16, $800; 2.33, $900; refurb 2.4, $1,299; 2.53, $1,449; 2.66, $1,699; 2.8, $1,899; new 2.53, $1,579; 2.66, $1,799; more.
Best Power Mac G4 and AGP Video Card Deals, 11.17. Used 400 MHz, $50; 933 MHz, $80; 500 dual, $60; 867 dual, $90; 1 GHz dual, $150; 1.25 GHz dual, $225; 1.42 GHz, $499.
Best Mac OS X 10.5 Deals, 11.17. "Leopard" upgrade, $80; single user license, $135; 5 users, $173; Mac Box Set, 5 users, $230; Server, 10 users, $340; unlimited, $850. Shipping included.
Best Mac mini Deals, 11.16. Used 1.42 GHz G4 mini, $379; 1.66 GHz Core Solo, $419; 2.0 Core 2, $450; new 2.26 GHz nVidia, $580; 2.53 GHz, $769; Server, $990.
Best iBook G4 Deals, 11.16. Used 12" 1.07 GHz Combo, $210; 1.33 GHz, $298; 14" 1.33 GHz, $398; 1.42 GHz, $479; SuperDrive, $498.
Best iPod shuffle Deals, 11.16. Used 1 GB, $35; 4 GB, $65; refurb 1 GB, $39; 2 GB, $59; new 2 GB, $55, 4 GB, $75. New and refurb prices include shipping.
More deals in our archive.

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Miscellaneous Ramblings ©1999-2009 by Charles W. Moore. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.