“and the civvie one I bought doesn’t work very well.”
Why are you buying your own CAC reader? They should be provided or recommended by your IT department. Readers have to be matched to use appropriate software requirements of the authenticating server.
There’s probably a webpage on your unit’s portal describing CAC requirements for off-site mail access. If you’re having these issues onsite, well, that’s a bigger issue.
I’m in a small Cav Guard unit, so we don’t have nearly the same support as active duty or larger/hq units do. They’ve been trying to buy everyone readers, but it hasn’t happened for about a year now. And I did buy one of the models recommended on the .mil website.
I initially got it working when I first installed it (on Firefox), but maybe a month later, with no major changes, the reader won’t work with Firefox, IE, or Pale Moon. Varying issues between them all.
I can still get into AKO/ALMS/etc using a username/pass, but the new Enterprise Email requires CAC access, so it’s unavailable to me. Sigh.