Here are the most frequently asked questions and their answers:

1. Identities

1. What are identities?

   An identity represents the information about a personality that you'd like to use. Identities separate the personal information (name, mail-address, signature) from the network information (server, username, password).
   You can for instance set up one identity representing your private personality and another one representing your work personality while both are actually using the same mail-account.
   Beam will use the appropriate identity (and thus it's mail-address and signature) automatically.

2. Why identities?

   Only with identities it is possible to create different user personalities for one mail-account. This is of particular interest if you own a domain and have a catch-all rule in place. With identities you can consistently use any (faked) mail-address without every exposing your other addresses to the respective communication partners.

3. How do I set up identities?

   Whenever you create a receiving mail-account, one identity will automatically be created with it (the identity shares its name with the account). After you have set up the account, please select the new identity and (optionally) enter your name, mail-address and select a signature, that's all.
   You can always create additional identities, you just have to select the mail-accounts that shall be used by the new identity (Beam will tell you to do so, if you haven't).
   

2. Reading mail

1. What POP3 authentication-methods does Beam support?

   Beam currently supports standard POP3-authentication (cleartext passwords) and APOP (somewhat "encrypted", but not really secure).
   If you ask Beam to check with the server and select a method, it will try APOP if the server indicates that it is supporting it. As this indication may be (and in fact sometimes is) incorrect, using APOP may fail. If that occurs to you, please try POP3, which should always work.

2. I have told Beam to fetch mails automatically every ... minutes, but nothing happens. How come?

   This probably means that the 'Automatically check for mails only if PPP is up'- prefs-setting is active and you are not using a dialup-connection to the internet (like when you are using DSL).
   If so, Beam avoids checking for mails since it believes you are not connected to the internet (no PPP-daemon is running). Otherwise, Beam would trigger dial-on-demand connections every xx minutes, working up your phone bill...
   Just deactivate the PPP-setting and things should work.

3. Sending mail

1. What SMTP authentication-methods does Beam support?

   Beam currently supports four methods for SMTP authentication: none, PLAIN, LOGIN and SMTP-AFTER-POP.
   In general, it is best to ask Beam to check with the server (press the button) and it will select the best possible method.
   Please note that there is no way for Beam to find out that your provider expects you to use SMTP-AFTER-POP, you have to select that manually.

2. What's the difference between forwarding and redirecting a mail?

   Forwarding a mail means to hand the content of a mail that you have received to another person. This is useful if you have just received the newest list of hot P2P servers and want to propagate ("forward") it to your friends.
   Redirecting a mail means to bend the communication channel away from you to another person. Let's say you have received a support query, but you are the wrong person to ask. You know the person who can answer the query, so you redirect the mail to him/her. This way, the receiver of the redirect will get all the info he/she needs to answer the original author of the mail (a reply will go to the original author, not to you!).

If you have any further questions concerning the usage of Beam, just ask the author!