STEP ONE (Setting Up Your Email Account)

We'll start with setting up your email account. Mac OS X Tiger comes with a wonderful application for sending, receiving, and managing your email. It's called (are you ready for this?) Mail. Okay, it's not a particularly cool name, but the program itself is actually very cool, and very well designed. To launch Mail, go ahead and click on the Mail icon in the Dock (its icon looks like a blue postage stamp with a bird on it). The first time you launch Mail, a window pops up to take you through the process of setting up your email account (basically, this is where you'll enter the user name, password, and other settings provided by your Internet Service Provider [we call it your ISP]).

STUFF YOU'LL BE ASKED VERY SOON, AND NEED TO KNOW

TIP When setting up your Mac to send and receive email, you're going to be asked for five bits of information that you'll need to get from the company that's providing your Internet access. You'll need to ask your ISP these things: (1) What type of account do I have? (Is it a POP account or an IMAP account?) (2) What is my user name? (3) What is my password? (4) What is my email address? (5) What is my Incoming (and Outgoing) Mail Server? Mail will ask for all five, so when you set up your Internet account, find out the answers to all five questions, write them down, and have them handy.