...is that there are many options, and almost all of them are bad.
When choosing an email account, you have 2 main options:
A. Use the email account that comes with your internet connection.
When you connect to the internet, whether it's through the network at school or work, or through an internet service provider (ISP) like AOL or MSN, they usually give you an email account. However, using this email account as your "main address", the address that you give to all your friends, is not a very good idea. That's because if you ever change ISPs, or leave school, or get a different job, your email address will have to change too. This is a huge annoyance, because you have to tell everyone your new address, and you might not be able to save your old emails.
B. Get an email account that's INDEPENDENT of your current internet connection.
This is the ideal email solution. With this setup, you can keep the same email address forever, regardless of whether you move, leave school, get a new job, or just change ISPs.
Within this solution, you have basically 2 options:
1. Get a webmail account. This is an email account that you can only check by using a web browser like Internet Explorer or Netscape. To compose, read, or send/receive email, you must visit a website and log in. This method is not really ideal, because you can't compose email without logging in to the website, and you can't read old emails without logging in to the website. Furthermore, you usually can't save all your old sent/received emails.
2. Get a POP, also known as POP3, email account. This is an account that you check by using a dedicated "email client" like Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, or Qualcomm Eudora. With this setup, all the email that you send and receive is automatically saved on your own computer. Plus you can read old email and compose new mail without connecting to the internet. You only need to connect to the internet when you want to send and receive new email. In addition, you can also check your email using a web browser (while you're away from your computer, for example), by visiting one of the many sites listed at mailreader.com or emailaddresses.com. For example, I use starten.net/mail which lets me check any and all of my POP3 email accounts from any web browser on any computer. This is the ideal type of email account to get.
(Note that a few email providers have both web-based and POP3 email access, which provides "the best of both worlds." But because of the free services offered by sites like starten.net/mail, any POP3 account is really "automatically" also a webmail account.)
So, what is my recommendation? Definitely get a POP3 email account. There are plenty of free POP3 email providers all over the internet. The question is, which one to choose?
For me, that depends on a couple things. First is reliability. An email account is no good if you can't access it half the time. Unfortunately, the only way to learn the reliability of an email provider is to try them, or ask someone who has. Second is advertising. I don't want an email account with a provider who will put an advertisement in each email that I send. And I don't want one that will give my email address to a bunch of spammers, so that I get tons of junk mail.
So what's the best one? I used to use www.crosswinds.net, but they're no longer free. Currently I have an account with my college, but that will only last as long as I'm a student here (which hopefully won't be too much longer...). So, I did a quick search on google.com and here's what I came up with.
iopus.com maintains a list of the "top 5 free POP email providers." As of this writing in November 2001, they rate GMX.net (aka GMX.co.uk) as number one. So I checked them out. They are a German company, and Germany has the most stringent privacy and data protection standards in the world. And GMX.net has their privacy policy on their website — you don't have to worry about that here. And, they don't put ads in your email. Finally, they're supposed to be extremely reliable. That satisfies all of my criteria.
iopus also lists yahoo.com, but they only offer POP access if you let them send you junk mail. So I don't recommend them for that reason. But, if you don't mind junk mail, then by all means, use yahoo.
Finally, emailaddresses.com and the ODP also maintain lists of free POP3 email providers. However, their lists are much bigger, so the email providers they list are not tested or critiqued as thoroughly. But, that doesn't mean that you can't find a good provider here... it just means that you'll probably find a better one with less work on iopus' list. As the iopus website says, "Why only five listings? Because we want to list only the best free email services on the web which we tested ourselves. Besides, even the listed TOP 5 email services are already four more than one really needs... If you are into giant lists ('the top 1000') simply enter 'free email' in any search engine."
