emailing from laptop while tethered to blackberry
 

While I am finding the tethering function useful, I am finding that the only way I can send out email from my laptop when tethered, is by using webmail and not the Thunderbird program I have on the laptop. This is inefficient, especially when using attachments. When trying to send using Thunderbird via the laptop I get an SMTP error message that it cannot connect to mail.bellsouth.net I tried to find a fix from t-mobile and blackberry ( asked about setting a different outgoing server setting) and got nowhere. Does anyone have an solution to this?

Try port 587 instead of 25, the mobile provider you are using is blocking port 25

Yes, port 25 (the default outgoing mail port) is being blocked. I would check with whoever is hosting your mail as they probably have a secure connection you can use to connect with which should not be blocked.

What wireless company do you have? Sprint seems to work fine for me. I've never had a problem with port blocking.

t-mobile. changing the port setting did not help.

From the little bit of research I did this morning it looks like BellSouth does not offer an alternate SMTP sending port/server for their users who are on an alternate network when sending. That's pretty cruddy service, IMO.

Here's a thread that has some others' troubles and similar results.