Albert Bricker said:
This is an excellent idea. However, I cannot find one that will allow the
sending of a newsletter to over 1000 receipents at a time.
What about breaking that up to smaller groups, say 10 canned emails of 100
recipients each? Once the templates are set up, the sends should take only
a few minutes. Or, create a script to automate individual sends addressed
sequentially to members of a list.
In addition I
cannot find one that will allow attachments of up to 50MB or more at a
time.
There's a pretty good reason for that. Email isn't really appropriate for
files that large.
I have researched this solution and I have tried to get them to install a
Small Business Network to no avail.
No need to. Set up an FTP server or rent online space. It's much easier
and inexpensive.
Now this is the solution I am working on and I simply need an answer to my
question.
I'm sorry, but from me, the simple answer is that I don't think this is a
particularly practical solution to this requirement.
One of the simple reasons is that there could be significant problems with
your solution, as it also requires that the recipient's email system be much
more than capable of handling 50 meg attachments and that neither party mind
losing access to their mail during the transfers. This may be outside your
control.
You may also discover that the recipient's IT group gets complaints of poor
mail server performance and decide to limit the attachment size without
telling you.
Have you checked that the recipient's mail system supports this plan, and
that they are willing to tie up their mail server for such large chunks of
data? A 50-meg file can take 10 - 30 minutes or more to transfer.
During that time, no other mail will arrive or be sent to the relevant
mailboxes, and you may find that both the recipient and the sender object to
this. In fact, you may find that everyone else using either mail system
at that time objects when the server performance degrades for half an hour
or more. Unless of course their server just crashes... neither of which
will be popular.
I regularly have to shift chunks of data (audio files) larger than this
(one is 80 meg today), and have found that the best method is to obtain
online storage space and simply send a notification and login information.
Today we are using
www.swapdrive.com for this, and it's working well. You
will probably find that the transfer times are considerably less, both in
reality and perception. And, it does not negatively impact anyone else's
ability to work.
Another significant problem with using email is the possibility of file
corruption. The file integrity will probably need to be verified by way of
checksum. If the file comes by email and the checksums don't match, it
will not be convenient to re-download it. The file will have to be resent,
tying up the mail servers again, with no guarantee that the same problems
won't occur.
But, if you use, say, an FTP server or something like Swapdrive, the
designer can get the checksum, upload the file, download it and verify the
checksum, and notify the printer of the location and checksum. Often the
checksum is stored in the same folder as a text file. This is a very
simple and very common way of safely performing this kind of transfer.
If that's not done, there is *no* way for the designer to be sure that what
the printer downloads is exactly what was uploaded.
And when errors occur, as they will, and the files don't match and costs are
incurred, who will hold responsibility? You want that to not be *you*.
HTH
-pk
