Thanks guys.  I'll check around to see what I can find.  I appreciate your help.

I downloaded the latest copy of Mercury just today.  I've got it functioning intermittently for my purpose.  Here's what I'm after and why:

I've changed ISPs recently and now I'm limited to sending email to 500 addresses in a day.  I have a list of a little over 1100 addresses that I need to send email to a few times each month.  (I'm the secretary for a volunteer organization.)  Spreading the email out over three days is a real pain, as is trying to use multiple ISP SMTP accounts.  I need my own local SMTP server without such restrictive limitations.  Googling around, I found Mercury.

I've set up MercuryC, MercuryS, MercuryE and, only so I could see error messages sent to Admin, MercuryP.  I address myself as "verizon.net" on the MercuryS "general" tab.   I use dns servers 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 for MercuryE's "Address discovery and DNS access".

I'm using Outlook 2003 as my mail client.  I've set up an Outlook Mercury email account using localhost/127.0.0.1 for the pop and smtp addresses.

Here are my results:

1) When I send email to an account on the novasova.org domain (volunteer organization), everything functions perfectly everytime.
2) When I send email to my gmail account, the email is sent fine but always ends up in my gmail spam folder.  But, when I send email to my wife's gmail account, the spam filter doesn't grab it.  (This may have something to do with my usinig my mail account as my reply-to account in Outlook.)
3) When I send email to an aol.com or verizon.net account, I get   "Connection error during handshake with"   followed by an one or more IP addresses.  I get multiple failed connection attempts on AOL alternate addresses.

It seems odd that the SMPT server functions fine for some email addresses and not for others.  Obviously, I can't use it this way.  Can anyone tell me what I may have misconfigured?

Thanks for your help.

Nothing is misconfigured, it is just that some servers are rejecting your connection because of your IP address, presumably dynamic, or at least in a range that they consider should not be sending mail directly.

There is nothing you can do about this without getting a static IP (or "business" IP in a range allowed to host a mail server).

You can use MercC to relay through your ISP, but then you are back to the original issue [:S]

Just can't win.  How about some sort of free proxy service.  Could I route through a proxy so the recipient servers receive the traffic from a static address on the proxy?  (Grasping at straws).

[quote user="Significent"]Just can't win.  How about some sort of free proxy service.  Could I route through a proxy so the recipient servers receive the traffic from a static address on the proxy?  (Grasping at straws).[/quote]

You do not need a free proxy server you need a free SMTP server that does not limit the traffic.  In many cases the university will provide 0e-mail services for their alumni.  If push come to shove you might find that you are going to have to pay for this sort of service.  Here's one I found that starts at $24 per year.