Most people have an email address. I lot of the time it is usually associated with your internet service provider such as Bigpond, Optus or IInet. However, there are a lot of free email services available such as Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail.
eMail has become a crucial tool in most home or business communication. Not longer do you have to wait a week for a letter to be sent overseas or even internally.
All you need to do is just jump on your computer, enter the email address, subject and message and once you hit send, your recipient will receive it instantly.
The traditional eMail Client
Most people use a program called an email client which goes out and gets your emails on your behalf and lists them on your computer. There are many program out there which do this such as Incredimail, Windows Mail, Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird which is free.
These programs are great and do most of the heavy lifting for you. They do require some setting up to begin with, but once they are done all you need to do is click on them to start them up and your email client will do the rest.
The lesser used Webmail
Webmail is a technology where you can access your email through a webpage, rather than an email client like Microsoft Offices, Outlook.
Most ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) and free mail based companies will provide webmail access.
Pretty much how it words is you will go to a specific address such as www.hotmail.com, put your unique username and password in the blank fields provided and you will be straight into your mail.
Free eMail Accounts
The top three and most well known free email accounts are Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail.
All three will give you a lot of free space for all your email needs, but Gmail made by Google is packed with the most feature and seems to be the industry standard right now.
A lot of people will have Hotmail addresses still due to its been around for about 20 years like Yahoo, but Gmail has been more aggressive in the marketing of late.
The beauty of using a free email services like these is when you change internet service providers, like from Bigpond to Optus, you will not have to change your email address. As Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo are all independent companies separate from your ISP.
Pros and Cons of Webmail
The pros of Webmail are you can quickly and conveniently access it anywhere.
When travelling overseas, being on the road, or having slow internet the ability to quickly go to a webpage without having to set anything up on a particular computer can be quite handy.
The biggest con with webmail is you miss out on a lot of the organisational features you would want in a email client such as file structure.
Also unlike an email client where most of your emails get downloaded to your computer, if you don’t have internet access at that particular time of wanting to read your emails, you simply cant.
Webmail can also be used on any computer with internet, smart phone, tablet, laptop or pc and desktop computer.
