AAR

[Cyl]

Do any of you use a free email account? If so, do you mind sharing who and why?

I need a new account and don't know what services are available, plus it's good to know what works for others and why. For instance, I have/had a Yahoo account but the spam is terrible. I have the filter on, but a ton of spam gets through anyway.

Any advice you can give is welcomed.

[Schola]

+IHS+

My favourite is Gmail. I like how messages are organised into conversations, so that I see my original message, the replies to it, and my replies to those all grouped together. I also like the search engine, which lets me search all saved messages for a single word.

However, I do miss the way I could organise my messages into folders, the way I did with my old Yahoo account. (Well, it's actually still active; but I only use it for the messenger on Beta these days.) Everything is just clumped together and I think I'm a trifle more disorganised because of that.

(In fairness, I haven't bothered to figure out what Gmail's new "archiving" feature is. It may be the same thing as those Yahoo Mail folders.)
_________________
"To be in a romance is to be in uncongenial surroundings. To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance." (G.K. Chesterton)

[Rosario]

I love gmail as well. The conversation view and the extremely easy-to-use search capabilities Schola mentions are two of the reasons, and I also love that you get a ton of space (almost 7 GB at last count... and it keeps growing. No need to delete anything). Not to mention having the little instant messaging window right there without having to open Messenger or AIM (very distracting, but you can always sign out of the chat). Oh, and I get very little spam, and 99.9% of what I do get is automatically filtered into the Spam folder.

Re: folders: the way I understand it, gmail uses labels to serve the same purpose that folders do in other email accounts. You just "tag" the email in question with a certain label, and then by clicking that label in the label list you see all the messages tagged in the same way. Just as if you'd moved them to a folder and were looking inside that folder.

The advantage is that you can actually tag a message with more than one label, so in effect, it's in several "folders" at the same time. This combines with the search engine in that you can easily search only among messages tagged in a certain way (even, for instance, among messages tagged "X" and "Y" at the same time, should you wish).

I don't use archiving, but I think it's basically just to clear messages out of your inbox. You then would need to click on All Mail to see them.
_________________
My Reading Journal
http://rosario.blogspot.com

[Tacilija]

I have Yahoo and Hotmail accounts, but I use Gmail as my primary email account, precisely for the reasons others already stated

[Tee]

I have a couple of Yahoo email accounts, but only to use when I'm accessing some sites where I don't want my primary email address used. For instance, at Photobucket and sites such as those. Otherwise, I use my cable provider's email address and access it through Outlook Express.

I've never used AOL, but I've heard horror stories from people who have accounts there. I don't know exactly why, but those that use AOL appear to have more difficulties on a somewhat consistent basis. Thanks for the tips on Gmail. I'm going to look into that one as an on-the-side one.

[LLB]

I'm in a minority when it comes to gmail. Although I use it as my primary download email account using Outlook, when it comes to gmail as webmail, it confuses the hell out of me. And a bigger problem is one that I think they've only begun to deal with; until very, very recently, you couldn't copy yourself on email. That seems to have been resolved, but not where googlegroups mail is concerned. AAR's internal email loop is run through googlegroups, and the emails *I* send through the loop are ones that don't arrive in my in-box. It's disconcerting, to say the least.
_________________
Laurie Gold
http://laurie-gold.blogspot.com

[LeeB.]

I have email accounts at Comcast, Yahoo and HotMail, but Yahoo is my primary account.

I've used Gmail but it's very complicated, especially when you want to make folders.
_________________
My Shelfari Shelf: http://www.shelfari.com/o1518275077

[Cyl]

Thanks for the tips. I've never seen or used gmail, so I'll check it out.

[Schola]

Cyl, I don't know if this is still the case, but when I started using Gmail, I first had to be "invited" by another Gmail user. If it's still so, let me know and I can send you an invite.
_________________
"To be in a romance is to be in uncongenial surroundings. To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance." (G.K. Chesterton)

[Cyl]

Thank you Schola. I'm travelling right now, so it may be a few days before I get to check it out.

[Yulie]

Invites were required to sign up for Gmail for the first year or two. They are no longer needed, you can just go to the website and sign up.