Beyond Free-Mail

E-Mail

Pro: Your e-mail is available at any Web-enabled PC nationwide, without configuration hassles.

Con: Handling of online mail is slower and less reliable than that provided by standard POP3 accounts; security remains a concern.

Best Use: A good supplement to business or personal e-mail accounts, especially for frequent travelers.

You have e-mail at work, but you don't use it for personal correspondence. You keep changing your ISP or AOL screen name. You travel a lot and want to check messages on the road. If any of these scenarios describes your situation, you're a good candidate for Web-based e-mail. These services provide a permanent e-mail address to call your own, paid for by banner advertising that appears on each screen you view. Your mail is accessible from any Web-ready computer, and you can even use your Web e-mail account to check messages from another account--except those protected by a firewall.

Then again, Web-based e-mail takes longer to collect and read than paid POP3 mail (because free e-mail providers usually use slower servers); ads litter your screen; and every message you send bears an intrusive tagline touting the service or asking whether you "Yahoo." Even worse, using Web-based e-mail can expose you to security risks (see "Add a Security Blanket to Free E-Mail"). If you seek a business account, stick with the POP3 e-mail hosted by your ISP.

On the other hand, if you just want an e-mail account for personal messages, you're in luck. Almost everyone with a domain provides free e-mail these days--it's a good way for companies to promote a Web site, generate repeat visits, and boost advertising revenue. So whose name should follow the @ sign in your Web-based e-mail address? Choose wisely, and you may never have to change your e-mail address again.

Our favorite free e-mail services are veterans Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. In addition to providing the usual features, both let you save your user name on your PC (Hotmail will also save your password) so you can log in instantly (this shortcut is not recommended for shared or portable PCs because of security concerns). They also provide strong filtering tools for incoming messages, including a filter that bounces e-mail from known spam merchants. And both sites' interfaces are well laid out and easy to use. Better yet, you can download e-mail for offline reading: You can collect mail from Yahoo with any POP3 e-mail software, including the popular programs Eudora, Netscape Messenger, and Outlook, while Hotmail integrates with Outlook Express 5.0. In both cases, the setup is quick, and the flexibility invaluable.

In contact management, Yahoo has a slight edge over Hotmail--it can import address book info from Outlook, Organizer, and Palms, as well as from other sources that can export their data in comma-separated value format. Yahoo Mail can also notify you of incoming messages, by sending a signal to Yahoo Messenger, an instant-messaging app that you install on your PC. But Hotmail shines in two other areas: It can scan incoming mail attachments for viruses before you download them, and it offers a dictionary and thesaurus, in addition to the standard spelling checker.

Each of the other contenders has its own strengths. One standout is Mail.com, which provides free e-mail service for a gaggle of other portal sites, including IWon.com and NBC.com. The service's best feature is its large selection of domain names. Instead of tethering you to name@mail.com, it lets you opt for such alternatives as the short-and-sweet @usa.com, the professional @consultant.com, or the cutesy @cheerful.com.

Another plus is Mail.com's 5MB mailboxes--2MB bigger than those most free e-mail services offer. Mail.com will also forward your messages to another e-mail address for free (as will Yahoo Mail). Just switch the feature off when you travel so you can view your messages from any Web-enabled computer. Even with such solid features, however, Mail.com could not overcome its two chief impediments: distracting advertisements and a so-so address book that lacks a nickname field and won't let you import multiple addresses at once.

Though Hotmail and Yahoo Mail are our favorite free e-mail services overall, the newly revamped Excite Inbox has evolved into an all-in-one in-box: It handles faxes and voice mail as well as e-mail. (Other integrated services offer similar features--see "One Mailbox, Indivisible?." ) Using a toll-free number, correspondents send you voice messages and faxes, which show up as file attachments in your Excite e-mail in-box. But the site limits the usefulness of this feature with a 3MB mailbox capacity and quotas on incoming non­e-mail messages. Like Yahoo Mail, Excite uses Starfish Software's stellar TrueSync program, which lets you keep contact information in sync by uploading address books from PIMs and personal digital assistants to your e-mail account, and vice versa.

ProntoMail has an online PIM and good message-formatting tools, notifies you of incoming messages via ICQ, and spell-checks in American and British English and in ten continental European languages. But the service's best features--mail forwarding, pager notification, e-mail by phone--cost money.

E-Mail Scorecard (chart)