People who’ve been on the internet either know a lot of stuff, or just a few websites, regardless of the time they spend on the net each day, and how much they’ve spent in their entire life. One such example is the number of email services people know.
Hotmail (www.hotmail. com) belongs to MSN, which is a part of Microsoft. Once you have a Hotmail account, you’ve got a “universal key” allowing you to sign in to other services with that account.
Their start page isn’t pleasing — a big square ad on the right and smaller ones elsewhere. They have tabs at the top, which are the main navigation buttons. Their junk filter is mostly ineffective (and from nowhere, you might start getting junk mail). It’s emptied every five days.
The compose screen is simple, but you might experience some hiccups with the mail composer. Attachments upload easily, and are scanned for viruses. Managing your contacts might be a bit tricky at first, but simple otherwise. Though the service is popular, it’s begun to loose touch. They’ve imposed limits on most things. You get 250MB storage with a 10MB attachment limit if you’re residing in selected countries (2MB storage and 1MB otherwise). Messages in trash are deleted daily. If you don’t log in once every 30 days, your account is deactivated. If you pay, most of these limits are relaxed.
Not long ago, Microsoft released images of the new Hotmail (currently named “Kahuna”), and is expected to replace the existing interface by the end of the year or early next year. It has several changes, and is much faster. In addition, each user will get 2GB free, but you’ll have to wait to see if they have any strings attached.
Yahoo (mail.yahoo.com) is currently the leader in the email community. Whatever Hotmail introduced, Yahoo followed. Yahoo provides 1GB of email space (free) and a 10MB attachment limit. You can choose different colour schemes according to your tastes. Their start page is informative. A small menu exists for navigation. They provide a calendar and a notes section (for jotting down anything) with email. The pages take long to load though. When composing an email, you don’t need to write your contact’s full email addresses (if already stored) — it automatically gives you suggestions. Attachments are scanned for viruses.
They recently acquired another company, Oddpost, and are going to change the email interface. It’s currently in beta. The new interface resembles Outlook Express. You cannot forward your mail, nor retrieve it from an email programme (POP access) unless you pay. However, if you have signed up with their Canadian service (mail.yahoo.ca), you get both, for free.
AOL joined the line (webmail.aol.com). Registration is free. Once you’re in, wait. After a long time, the page loads up (especially on dialup), and once it does, you won’t understand why it took long. You’re given 2GB of space. Mail delivery is fast, and navigation is easy. The email editor looks good, and isn’t complicated. They too, have the address auto-complete feature.
If you wish, you can check your email via Outlook Express or any other programme with IMAP, allowing you to bypass the heavy loading and bulky ads (IMAP is different from POP). They also have a drag-and-drop facility, making email sorting easier.
In conclusion, the interface isn’t bad, except for it’s sluggish performance. It has ads everywhere, leaving no space for the messages and other essentials. It seems they’ve given priority to the ads than the interface, further slowing things. They claim to have the best spam filter, but will it turn out to be the same as Hotmail’s?
Gmail (www.gmail.com) is Google’s version of email (and “threatened” other providers). Gmail was the reason why Hotmail and Yahoo are providing this much space. Currently, Gmail provides 2.6 GB of space, and it increases on an average rate of 3 to 4 MB per day. Signing up is free, but requires an invitation (which can be picked up from websites on the internet). Once signed up, you automatically have 2 addresses — one with dots in your username, and one without (sometimes helpful for those who can’t sign up to a website because it doesn’t allow dots in email addresses), but your login ID stays what it was at the time of sign up. More can be read on Gmail’s help site.
The interface preloads, and once loaded your inbox is loaded. You can search your email, but can’t sort (they believe in “search, don’t sort”).
The compose window is simple. You can create account aliases (impersonate as another person with a different email address) but your mail might be marked as spam. They were the first ones to introduce address auto-complete.
They don’t use folders, rather, labels are at play which are more flexible than folders, (but can act like folders). They offer POP access too.
Email messages are sorted automatically by subject (making conversations), which gives Gmail an edge over other services. It’s handy if one needs to refer back to what someone said in another mail of the same subject. You can reply from the message screen, keeping track of what’s going on.
While Gmail is different in numerous ways, it’s still in beta. It had a history of nasty things, but have been fixed. Sometimes, you might not be able to log in due to server maintenance. But for the majority, the service is reliable and interruption-free. And — because it’s in beta, you can expect many more features to come (a suggestion page has been provided).
Inbox is an ISP in the USA who launched email a while back (www.inbox.com). It’s heavily inspired by Gmail. Many features resemble such as view messages as a conversation, address autocomplete, starring, to name a few. Email delivery is fairly fast, but receiving is slow generally (which is an insignificant issue).
They have a few features which don’t exist in Gmail though — such as “Notes”, where you can jot down anything (similar to the Notepad in Yahoo mail) and storage — upload files as big as you wish, as it uses your email quota for storage. One good feature though is that you can upload attachments from your storage space — which prevents the unnecessary delay of reattaching files. Again, files are automatically scanned for viruses. The catch is — the file you choose must be 10MB or less. They have live support in addition to basic support. Because they’re in the USA, you would only be able to chat with them in the evening and night times.
From an independent source, currently Yahoo leads the email domination market, with around 60%, and Hotmail and Gmail follow. It was Gmail which started the new trend of giving huge storage space (and subsequently, Hotmail and Yahoo were forced to follow as well as others). There are many more to choose from and with space, but the ones discussed above were the ones with features and reliability and popularity. These services have paid versions too (Hotmail and Yahoo) but who would want to pay for email when you can get it for free? Hence, before switching over, evaluate the services and see which ones suit your needs. And be prepared for spam!
People who’ve been on the internet either know a lot of stuff, or just a few websites, regardless of the time they spend on the net each day, and how much they’ve spent in their entire life. One such example is the number of email services people know.
