Welcome to the Bureau for the Understanding and Research of PostPets

Introduction to PostPet

Last Updated: January 18th 2000

What is PostPet, anyway?

(And why should I get it?)

Kayla wants to give you a big hug!

PostPet is a super user-friendly e-mail program... so friendly, it sends you e-mail greetings and writes to you in a secret diary!

Your PostPet lives in a little room in your computer, and you have to feed it, wash it, clean away its mess, and occasionally scold it (by clicking on it) just like a tamagotchi (or other virtual pet)!  The main difference between PostPet and regular Desktop Virtual Pets, though, is that it can leave its "room" to hand-deliver e-mails to another friend with PostPet! While at someone else's PostPet Room, your pet can play with the other person's Pet, fight with it, eat its food, or maybe even fall in love...   It writes you a little diary entry while it's away, and on its way home may even pick up little "treasures" like a piece of rainbow, or a magic pot. In the latest version of PostPet, PostPet 2.1 (aka PostPet: The World) you can even give your pet a cute toy to keep it from getting lonely or bored!

Kaylee and her Treasures

As your pet matures, its intelligence, looks, level of happiness, and other parameters are affected by how you treat it, as well as how your friends treat it.   For example, if you send your pet out to a friend's "room" to play, and that "friend" slaps your pet, the pet could be very hurt, or grow up emotionally scarred as a result!

(Editor's note: This assumes the pet sticks around long enough to actually get slapped. In my experience, the PostPets only stick around for a minute or two when delivering mail... giving you little time to interact with them beyond checking their stats and maybe feeding them.)

If the pet grows to like your friends and their PostPets, it may start sending e-mails to them on its own!

Other stuff:

  • You can download new snacks for your pet whenever the reserves get low, or whenever something new becomes available.

    (Editor's note: It appears that PostPet 2.1 has been altered so that it is harder to download 'original' plugins such as snacks and rooms. It is rumoured that this is a safety measure to prevent hackers from distributing potentially dangerous snacks to PostPet users!)
  • The snacks for available in the Postpet Premium Package and on the PostPet Park Pacific Site often have a Singaporean or Malaysian flavour to them, such as mangoes and nasi lemak (some sort of fried rice wrapped in banyan leaf).
  • Click here to Visit my PostPet Snacks Area.

  • Some free POP3 e-mail accounts can act up sometimes. If you get one of the following messages (Wrong SMTP or POP server) (Wrong username or password), try closing down PostPet for a few hours, and trying again.

  • Click here to Visit my PostPet E-mail Center, and to find out how to set up many of the free POP3 e-mail servers out there!

PostPet can be a bit of a challenge to set up, but once it's correctly set up and configured, it's a delightful e-mail program, and charming virtual pet!

(Editor's note: I may be biased in that I spent a frustrating year-and-a-half using Web e-mail only, because my sister had hijacked the family account as well as the Eudora Lite and Eudora Pro programs on our computer. In that sense, PostPet was a ghodsend... the first e-mail program that actually lets me compose stuff OFFLINE....

*happy sigh*)


 

Where can I get PostPet?

Right now, a limited trial version for Windows 95/98is available at

The Sony Singapore Homepage .

It lasts for 10 days, and your choice of pet is limited to Momo the Pink Teddy Bear or John the Mongrel Dog; as well, you can only use a few select snacks as well as two rooms, the Teddy Bear Room and the Mongrel dog Room.

PostPet is available as a commercial product, PostPet Premium, which you can purchase online from Sony Singapore, or from select stores in Singapore and Hong Kong. As well, it is available in normal, Deluxe, and PostPet 2001 (with all new characters) versions for Japanese Windows 95 and Japanese Macs... in Japan only, of course.

PostPet The World (also known as PostPet 2.1) is currently available in a shareware-type program that you download from their website, and register using a license key that you purchase separately. The actual CD-ROM package is available for English and Chinese Windows 95/98... still no Mac version, apparently.

Both PostPet Premium and PostPet The World come as a double-CD; one is for yourself, and the other is for a friend!


 

What do I need to run PostPet?

The general requirements, as stated on the Official Sony PostPet Page are:

  • CPU i486SX-33MHz,
  • 8MB or more of available memory,
  • 30MB or more of available hard disk space,
  • Microsoft Windows 95/98 English or Chinese Version
  • 256 or more colors enabled.

(We recommend CPU Pentium-100MHz or more, and 16MB or more memory)

You also need an e-mail account that is compatible with POP3 and SMTP e-mail programs.

If you already have such an account, then be sure to find out what the pop3 and smtp settings are... you'll need this info when setting up your PostPet!

If you don't have such an account, or aren't sure if you do, you can get several FREE POP3 e-mail accounts on the web!

Be warned, however... after doing a search on "free +e-mail +POP", and after checking out some of the links on a free e-mail directory, I've found that a lot of places claiming to be POP3 compatible really mean to say:
"We'll let you use PostOfficeProtocol, or POP, to download all your messages from other accounts, into your account with us, so that you'll ONLY use our service, and we'll make a lot of money from all those advertisers eager to bombard our captive audience."

Here, however, is a brief list of GENUINELY free POP3 e-mail accounts. I am already registered at most of them, and can personally vouch for how well they work with my PostPet program.

You will need to go on-line to register for them, but once they are set up, within an hour or so they should be ready for use as PostPet accounts. Have fun!


Send me PostPet mail!!
Send me PostPet mail HERE!

Send me e-mail!
Send me normal e-mail at turquoiseangel@hotmail.com!



Link to me, Baby!
Just use your left mouse button to click on the picture, save to disk, and upload to your webpage!


Warp to Main Page Warp to Virtual Pets Page Warp to PostPet Page Warp to BoardRoom Warp to Guestbook
Home V-Pets PostPet Boardroom Guestbook