Email account recommendations -
 

Does anyone have any recommendations for email account providers? I am looking for one "freebie" (yahoo, hotmail, etc) and possibly one that I would be willing to pay for if it seemed worth it (allowing for superior folder capabilities, saving capacity,etc)

I can USE email, but that is about the extent of my technie knowledge, so remember to be kind to us old folk in your response :D

I use GMail almost exclusively. It's slick, fast and very well designed. You can either use it as Webmail (like Hotmail) or you can use a mail client like Eudora to download your mail to your own machine.

gmail.com -- if you have trouble getting an account let me know and I'll send you an invite.

I personally have used hotmail and gmail (google's email program). I enjoy google, and it's easy to use, even on mobile web (cell, pda/blackberry). Its completely free, and as of this moment, you get ~6.5 GB space (it's constantly going up), which is pretty massive. The chat function is pretty cool, and your chats get saved with your mail. As for the mail itself:

Instead of folders, gmail uses "Labels," which are added to a particular message. You can add more than 1 label to a message if you want, color code the labels (to make them easier to spot), and easily add or remove the labels.

Gmail uses google's search function to search your email, which for some reason doesn't appear to be as effective as regular google, which is the only flaw I've found with it, although most of the time it works.

Gmail's spam trap is usually pretty good at picking up spam without being too overreaching.

If you need an internet calendar, Google Calendar can email you your calendar and reminders daily, and also offers an "add this to your calendar" function, which can be found in emails with a meeting time and place listed.

Lastly, Gmail's conversation function makes your inbox a lot less cluttered. It groups together replies and messages from the same concept, into one heading in your inbox. For example, you get a confirmation from your airline. You forward it to me, I respond. This shows up as 1 conversation, taking up one line in your inbox.

Hope this helps

sammy0623 has outlined gmail's strong points better than I ever will.
I will just endorse her (his?) post, and point you towards gmail, too.
It's a good idea to have a disposable address (for newsletters, website registrations etc) on top of your normal one. For that purpose, I use mail.gr. Free to use and easy to remember...

Yes definitely Gmail. Ample space, quick and superb spam protection.

Are you specifically looking for a webmail account - i.e., do you need to access mail regularly from machines other than your own?

For speed, flexibility, and versability I would always use a mail client on my own machine rather than webmail, and as a provider I would use someone that does not impose spam filtering on customers but that allows customers to choose. (If you allow your ISP to do your spam filtering for you then you can guarantee that a significant proportion of genuine mail will never reach you).

I like gmail, I like yahoo, I do NOT like hotmail.

I prefer yahoo's folder feature to gmail's label feature (I'm not sure why, since I use them the same way), but as you can assign multiple labels to a single message, it is actually more flexible.

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gmail

You won't need anything else.

I agree; Gmail.

But to make it better, check out Google Apps; it's Gmail but with your own domain name. Best of all, it's FREE, except for the price of the domain name, which is around $10 a year.

I have both of the above. Either is a fine option. No other free email provider comes close to Gmail.

Hosted Gmail (part of Google Apps) is a better choice if you want to share email/calendar/documents with family members/friends, but you need to have someone with a bit of technical savvy set it up.

I have yahoo and gmail. I use Thunderbird as an email client for my gmail.

What I don't like about gmail is threading email. I can never figure out what I've read. Some folks do like it, though. With Thunderbird, I have each email separately.

I have gmail on my Treo and it works well.

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The beauty of gmail is you can leave your mail on the server - so you get the separated emails in Thunderbird/Eudora/Outlook/Outlook Express AND you can leave messages on the mail server for when you're travelling.

Gmail + Google Apps www.google.com/a is great, however you will need a tech savvy friend to set it up.

Actually, Google for Domains has become much easier in the past year. If you don't have a domain (yet), you can buy one from them, and they'll set it up for you. And if you host with Godaddy, you can do a one-click setup of the configuration on your domain.