Last week I blogged about my neighbour’s problems setting up his iMac G5 to use AOL broadband. Since replacing the ADSL modem with a router he is back online, but last night we spent some time sorting out a few remaining items: transferring data; installing a printer; configuring email; and working out why some web pages refuse to load in the Safari browser.

The first two items were straightforward enough (he had an external disk which was handy for the data transfer and the OS X version of the drivers for his printer were downloaded from the ‘net), but for e-mail it’s worth knowing that AOL doesn’t use port 25 for outgoing SMTP – I found an article on sending and receiving AOL e-mail via other applications, which highlights that the SMTP port is 587 (not the standard 25) and that authorisation is required.

Finally, Safari was consistently refusing to load pages from some major websites (but working for others). I had thought of installing Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 for Mac OS X; until Stuart recommended that I installed the OS X version of Firefox, which seemed to cure the problems with browsing.