>I've got @Home through Comcast and have had several frustrating interchanges with them. I rarely lose all connectivity (though it happens), but twice in the last month or so, I've been connected but unable to get my email.

That's happened to mee too. I still get an ocassional problem with email, but it generally goes through the next time.

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>The first time, they'd changed my email address because they "reprovisioned" my modem. Of course, they didn't bother to tell me about it, and couldn't understand why 'tamargranor1' was not an acceptable user name to me. Took a couple of days to get it sorted out.

I had the same problem a year or so ago, but they worked it out.

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>The second time, I still don't know what happened. They, of course, don't support Outlook, so I had to set up an account in Outlook Express. For reasons I still don't understand, my messages downloaded there when they wouldn't in Outlook. Once that had happened, Outlook was happy again and all messages came through.

I use Outlook and it works fine. Strange that Outlook doesn't work for you. Your email client shouldn't matter.

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>Overall, life is much better when I don't have to talk to @Home's customer service people. (And the Comcast people really have trouble understanding that I have Internet service, but no cable TV. <g>)

The only reason I call customer service is to get a credit on my bill when the outage is their fault. If my service is out for more than a couple of hours, I call the local Tech manager.

I don't have cable TV either.