E-mail Was Meant to be Free

 by Doug Smith

http://web.archive.org/web/20000410040831/www.ed2go.com/news/email.html

Tired of forking out hard-earned cash for an e-mail account? Can't get your e-mail from your favorite little coffee shop? Want to send e-mail at work behind the boss's back? Want to create separate e-mail addresses for the spouse, kids, and family pet? I've got the solution for you: free Web based e-mail. 

Web based free e-mail is the hottest thing the Net has going for it right now. Almost everybody wants a piece of it. Why? Easy. For most people, Web based e-mail is more convenient and easier to access and use than the normal run-of-the-mill e-mail service your Internet Service Provider (ISP) offers.

Ordinarily, your Internet Service Provider holds all mail addressed to you on one of their computers, which they insist on calling a POP (Post Office Protocol) server. It's like a big electronic P.O. box, a secure place for the provider to stash your mail until you have a chance to take it from them. When you want to read your mail, you start up an e-mail program (such as Outlook, Eudora, Netscape, or AOL) that has been specially configured to contact and negotiate with the POP server. This program will locate your mail on the server and move it to your computer's hard drive, where it stays until you get tired of looking at it.

Unfortunately, this means that you can only read your mail when you're using your very own computer. If you're at work or at school or traveling and your mail program is at home, you're out of luck.

Say you've been staying with your mother-in-law for a few weeks. You're itching to catch up on your mail, but your computer's at idle halfway across the country. There's no easy way for you to read mail you've already received. But what about new messages, you ask? Aren't they just sitting there on the POP server, ripe for the picking?

Technically, the only way you're gonna get at any mail that might be sitting on your POP server will be to reconfigure your mother-in-law's e-mail program so that it fetches your mail instead of hers. Sound risky? You bet it is! Reconfiguring an e-mail program is not a task for the faint of heart. But if you're successful, your mail will come flooding in to your mother-in-law's machine, where it will settle on her hard disk. When you leave for home, you will need to reconfigure the computer back to its original settings--you did remember to write those settings down, didn't you? And the mail you received at your mother-in-law's will remain in her possession. It won't follow you home, so you'll need to remember to print out the important messages and stuff them in your luggage before you leave.

With Web based e-mail, these sorts of difficulties become a thing of the past. All you need to get your mail is a computer with an Internet connection and a Web browser. There's no need to worry about kooky mystical configurations and reconfigurations. As long as you can access a browser, you can check your mail from work, school, the library, or your little yuppie coffee house (if you just HAVE to see the latest missive from Buffy and Skip). 

What's more, you won't have to share your e-mail address with others any more. Most Web based e-mail services allow families or businesses to set up multiple accounts. If you're tired of having your family members or officemates snoop through your personal messages, you can set up a unique, password-protected address for yourself and another address for others who share the use of your machine.

Web based e-mail messages are not stored on your hard drive. Instead, your Web-based e-mail is stored on the provider's server. This means that you can access all of your messages whenever and wherever you want to. You just start the browser, type in your provider's URL (Web address), identify yourself, and start reading. You don't even have to own your own computer to use Web based e-mail. As long as you have access to a computer equipped with a browser, you're good to go. If you lose access to a machine before you're finished reading your messages, there's no need to panic. The messages will still be waiting for you the next opportunity you get to sneak some time on another unused computer.

Most Web based e-mail is FREE. You have to put up with some banner ads but the folks who provide this service have to make money somehow. They offer their advertisers a captive audience (you), and you get to see the fascinating ads they devise. If you want to make your provider happy, click an ad or two--they earn a few pennies each time you do that.

Web based e-mail programs are just as functional as ordinary e-mail programs. You can send, save, and forward mail, maintain address books, send attachments, scan attachments for viruses, filter e-mail, spell check, and more. You can also peruse the news and gasp at the latest stock quotes while waiting for your mail to print. 

Web based e-mail is also private and secure. When you sign up, you choose your own personal ID and password. Only you have access to your account. 

Signing up for Web based e-mail is quick and easy. It takes only two or three minutes: basically, you go to the site, give up a little personal information, choose a username and password, and you're ready to start sending and receiving mail.

The interface you'll use to get and create mail over the Web is designed with the novice in mind. The controls are large, well-labeled, and easy to find. With a few minutes of practice, even the clumsiest of users will seem like a pro. I've used an ordinary mail program at work for almost a year, and still have trouble figuring out how all the buttons and menus work. But it only took me 15 minutes or so to master my Web based service. Even if I did have a problem, technical support is readily available.

Perhaps the most well known and popular Web based e-mail site is Microsoft Hotmail. Hotmail claims a membership of 28 million, and the service is adding 150,000 new users every day.

Just behind Hotmail in popularity (and gaining fast) is Yahoo's free service. Other companies providing free Web based e-mail include Bigfoot, Excite, Juno, and RocketMail.