E-MAIL

E mail is probably the killer appon the Internet. It’s a service that almost every Internet user takes advantage of to keep in touch with friends, family and co-workers. There are many ways to access Email - through desktop software, websites, or your phone. What’s right for you depends on ... you.


1. GET INTERNET
If you want the fastest Internet available and the ability to send and download big attachments, go for a WiMax connection. These start at speeds ranging from 1- 4 MBPS. Other options include connecting your 3G or GPRS phone to your computer as a modem. How to setup all these service is detailed in our codex at the back of this magazine.


2. CHOOSE WEB OR DESKTOP MAIL
You now have two broad choices. You can check your mail online, or you can download it to your PC. Or both. If you have office mail they’ll give you something called POP or IMAP settings. You enter these settings into the Outlook or Thunderbird programs and then they will download your mail to your PC. Confused? If you want immediate satisfaction just pop over to the websites at left, take 10 minutes to register and you’ll have a working Email account pronto. If you want to start downloading mail later all - except Yahoo - allow POP access. So, if you go with webmail you can have your cake and download it too.


3. GET FANCY
Within their settings, every email program (PC or online) has some powerful capabilities. In Outlook you can browse to Tool/Rules and Alerts and set messages from work to go to a certain folder and messages from family to another. The Webmail programs also have this ability. GMail, in particular, has an excellent system of ‘Filters’ and ‘Labels’ that can organize your email automatically.


4. BACKUP
Webmail is generally pretty safe and won’t disappear. If you want a physical backup the software at mailstore.com will let you backup to disk. For desktop clients you can export the physical file and save a copy of that. In Outlook you’ll go to File/Import and Export and you export what’s called a pst file. Just save that somewhere safe and call theIT guy if things fall apart.


5. STOP CHECKING
There is actually no need to check your mail every 5 minutes. The most productive people check a few times a day and process everything.

Computer E-mail

GMAIL
GMail is the technological leader. When they launched 1GB of storage it was the biggest ever and its interactive AJAX ‘software-like’ interface was the first of its kind. Now competitors have copied both innovations. Where GMail still excels is its fantastic search and labelling and organizing capabilities. GMail offers about 6 GB of storage,and growing.


YAHOO MAIL
Yahoo is the leader in webmail. Their service is stable, reliable and pretty generous with unlimited storage and 10MB attachments. Yahoo Mail has also jumped on the web-software bandwagon with a pretty sophisticated new client. From inside Yahoo Mail you can send instant messages and read RSS Feeds of your favourite news sites. The site also uses AJAX so only part of the page reloads when you make a request, saving you time.


WINDOWS LIVE HOTMAIL
Hotmail (now officially Windows Live Hotmail) is one of the oldest email services. After an upgrade, it’s now AJAXified, has 5GB of storage, and integration with Messenger, Spaces and contacts. It is sometimes a bit slower than the other options, but it’s competitive at offering software-like functionality.



Mobile E-Mail


Gmail Mobile
Now you can access your Gmail messages from the web browser on your mobile phone or device. Read and reply to your Gmail messages any time, anywhere.


Yahoo! Go
Yahoo! Go is an application for mobile phones that features search, email, news, photos, and other services pushed to your cell phone.


Hotmail Mobile
Windows Live Hotmail Mobile (formerly Windows Live Mail Mobile) is the version of Windows Live Hotmail that targets small form factor mobile devices that can render either xHTML, cHTML or HTML. It aims to provide a clean, easy to use and fast experience for users to browse through the e-mails on their mobile devices