The first thing I am going to suggest is wean your self off that awful aol you do not need it and will feel so free once you unburden your self from it. Especially with a nice new macbook to play with. You have a nice new mac and are loading it with aol which is from the time of dinosaurs in computer time. everything you do using aol you can do usually easier with out aol. are you certain you downloaded the appropriate version of aol for use with your mac? there are different versions. AOL Desktop this is a really old article I found but it shows a lot of the hookup info some may still apply, I don't know I would not put aol on anything I own. AOL in Mac you may want to try some of the dedicated mac forums online you can find some doing a google search.

Urlee, I found instructions at Firetrust.com for MailWasher Pro. Don't know if they will work with the free version or not. Here's what they say: GMail: Click Settings > Forwarding and POP > POP Download > Check Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on. Go to: "When messages are accessed with POP" and choose Delete Gmails copy. Click Save changes. MailWasher Pro: Click Tools > Email Accounts > Add > select POP3 > click OK. Enter a name reference for your account in the Account name. Enter pop.gmail.com in the POP3 server address field. Enter your full GMail email address in the User Name field. Enter your GMail password in the Password field. Click Advanced Account Options. Check the box next to This server requires a secure connection (SSL) under Incoming Mail (POP3). The port will change to 995. Click OK. Click OK HTH. Terry

Sorry I do not distribute other peoples proxy addresses. You just have to take some time to find some good ones. There are literally hundreds of sites listing them. It helps to kep yopur proxies as close to your geographical location as possible for the best latency and response times. The other boxes are for protocols other than the HTTP protocol (insecure web surfing): SSL Proxy: is Secure Socket Layer for secure web surfing on webservers that support it. It offers 128 bit data encryption between any 2 points so if anyone sniifs or intercepts the communication, the data is encrypted (scrambled or jumbles beyond comprehension). This is often used for secure online purchases and on sites where user information and any data transfered is of a private or confidential nature. FTP Proxy: is File Transfer Protocol. This is used mainly for uploding content to web space, and some use it for visitor downloads because it uses less server resources (ram allocation) than the http protocol, so it makes sense for larger files. Gopher Proxy: is The Gopher Protocol, and is a distributed document search and retrieval network protocol designed for the Internet. Its goal is to function as an improved form of Anonymous FTP, with features similar to that of the World Wide Web. The Gopher protocol offers some features not natively supported by the Web and imposes a much stronger hierarchy on information stored on it. SOCKS v.4 and v.5 Host: Socks protocol provides a framework for client-server applications in both the TCP and UDP domains to conveniently and securely use the services of a network firewall. The protocol is conceptually a "shim-layer" between the application layer and the transport layer, and as such does not provide network layer gateway services, such as forwarding of ICMP messages. This is an application layer protocol, but finding a socks server working on the specific port that you need could be a duanting task. There really is no reason to use this unless an organization you are affiliated with is running a socks proxy for you for use of a certain application(s) for client to server connectivity using the security of their network instead of yours. No Proxy For: is a place to enter addresses that you will not use a proxy for. 127.0.0.1 and localhost are you, your internal loopback interface. Connecting to those are connecting to your own computer. If you run a webserver or other server and want to connect to yourself, then it wont go through the proxy. Enter the addresses here for the ones you wish to visit and not go through a proxy. Automatic Proxy Configuration URL: is for organizations who want to synchronize all of their users under the same proxy configurations automatically. Users click on this link and automatically set up their proxy configuration to their organizations defaul setup. Yes you can turn it off and on with ease or set it up for automated usage depending on the sites you visit.

you will need to know which version of AVG you have if it is the new version 8 AVG and if it is the free or paid version. If this is a new built pc you should probably let the builder troubleshoot it. Here is a link to the forums at AVG where you could ask them this question, however you will need to provide the version info and give them your pc info also. There is a dedicated email scanner which in version 8 you can turn off to see if that would change how your mail is acting. That way you might be able to determine if it is working ok with out the AVG email scanner then you know what might possibly be conflicting. Here is a link that might be useful: AVG forum