Section 14.1. Email Program vs. Web-Based Email | iPhone: The Missing Manual, 4th Edition

14.1. Email Program vs. Web-Based Email

There are two basic ways to check your email: using a special, separate email program or on a Web page. Both have their pros and cons, and both have gotten much more flexible over the years about how and where you can pick up your mail.

14.1.1. How Computer-Based Mail Works

Many people use a dedicated mail program to download messages programs like Outlook, Outlook Express, Entourage, Mail, Thunderbird, or Eudora. These programs download your mail, display it for you, and let you send messages of your own. These email programssometimes called email clients live on your computer. They generally store all your messages on your hard drive, not on the Internet; the advantage here is that you can work on your email even when you're in a plane, train, automobile, or otherwise not online. (There are exceptions to this, covered later in the chapter.)

When you choose a program to use, you have to configure the software to work with your Internet service provider's mail server . A mail server is a computer that serves as an electronic post office. Like the post office, it has mailboxes for all the people who have email accounts with the ISP; it stores your incoming mail until you "pick it up."

When you use your email program to check for new messages, it knocks on the mail server's door with your password and asks for the mail addressed to your account. The mail server hands it over to your mail program, which downloads and deposits the new messages in the inbox on your own computer.

Here are some points to consider if you're on the fence about getting a computer-based mail account.

Pros . Because they're full-fledged software programs, dedicated mail applications have more built-in features to make mail easier to use and organize. You often get more robust spell checkers and the power to set up mailboxes for multiple accountslike your work and personal email.

Most programs provide simulated folders, so you can organize all the messages from certain people or concerning certain topics. You also get customizable toolbars and can do fun things like pick your own audio alerts for incoming messages.

You can also set up an unlimited amount of mail rules , or conditions and instructions that tell your mail program what to do with certain types of messages. For example, if you've created a special folder called Mom in your mail program, you can make a mail rule that tells the program to look at the return address of each new message and send all messages from mom@younevercall.com right into your Mom folder so they don't get lost in the jumble of your inbox.

Junk mail filters , which use elaborate mail rules to screen incoming messages for the scent of spam, are included with most mail programs (Outlook Express 6 is a notable exception). Junk mail filters, which you can fine-tune if you find they're tagging your friends as spammers, can be set to route unwanted mail into a Junk folder or right into the Trash.

Note, too, that a separate email program keeps your old mail right there on your hard drive, which means that you always have access to it in case you need to look up a previous conversation.

Finally, a dedicated email program doesn't slap ads on your outgoing messages. ( Web-based email services, described next , often do stamp your emails with commercial messages.)
Cons . It takes a few minutes to configure your mail program's settings so it knows how to find your mail server. (The steps are explained in detail in Section 14.1.4.4.)

As noted previously, your downloaded mail lives on your computer's hard drive where you can always get to your old messages. There's a downside to this, though: If something goes wrong with your hard drive or your mail program crashes and corrupts your mailbox files, those messages are gone forever (unless you've backed up your computer).

Many ISPs scan incoming messages for viruses; some mail programs, including Outlook Express and Thunderbird, have security features built-in to help stop viruses from spreading. But, even so, if you use Windows, you may want to invest in antivirus software that scans your incoming messages for infection because these programs usually catch newer viruses faster. (All the antivirus programs covered in Chapter 21 do this.)

14.1.2. How Web-Based Email Works

Some people prefer to work on their email on a Web page (instead of a special email program), using what's known as a Web-based email service. Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo are the Big Three.

Most Web-based email systems work like this: you sign up for an account. Whenever you want to go postal, you log into your account on the Web site and work right in your browser window.

Pros . The best part about Web-based email is that you can check your mail and send messages from any Internet-connected computer. Even if you use a Mac at home in Cleveland, you can check your Web-based email from the PC in the hotel lobby in Dublin and not miss a message. Your email address book is online, too. You're not even giving up the ability to save messages on your hard drive at home; you can save online messages at any point.

Another big plus: Your email address never changes (unless you want it to). When people move or switch ISPs, they typically have to give up their old email addresses (for example, guitarman@aol.com has to tell everyone that he's now guitarman@earthlink.net). A Web-based email address, in contrast, never changes. You can move to a new city, state, or even a different country, or you can fire AOL as your ISP and hire Earthlink; the point is, it doesn't matter who provides your Internet connection. With a Web-based email account, you never have to change your address.

Web-based mail also may work better when sending mail from certain WiFi hotspots (Section 1.3.1). That's because an increasing number of WiFi providers block traditional, PC-based mail services to keep spammers from parking down the street and flooding the network with spam. That doesn't effect Web-based email, which handles mail differently.

Some people find Web-based mail easier to set up because they're spared the chore of configuring those annoying settings called SMTP, POP3, and/or IMAP (see the box in Section 14.1.4). Most Web-based email sites offer ways to send copies of your mail to a dedicated email program like Outlook Express, if you wish, giving you the best of both worlds : You can read and respond to email while on the road, and have that same mail waiting for you in your computer's inbox when you return home. That lets you store a master record of all your mail on your computer for reference.

Many Web-based mail services now screen messages for viruses ahead of time, so you have much less chance of getting your own computer infected with a wormy file attachment. Many services give you a basic junk mail or spam filter, too, that automatically routes offers for herbal remedies and fine jewelry right into a holding pen and away from your real mail.

Many Web-based mail services can handle HTML messages just fine and offer their own tools for jazzing up your text if you want to stand out from the plain-text crowd . Spell checkers are a standard now, too.

Best of all, the three Web-based email services described in Section 14.1.4 are free.
Cons . The biggest problem with Web-based services is that you have to go online to work with your email. You can't work on a plane or a train (unless you've set up your mail program to grab a copy of all your Web-based mail, too).

Furthermore, some people think it's creepyand possibly a security riskto store their email on any computer other than their own. But this shouldn't be particularly frightening; after all, your PC-based email travels through dozens of other computers (each with its own potential security problems) before safely arriving in your Outlook Express inbox. There's nothing inherently insecure about Web-based email.

Space may be an issue, too. Most free services limit the amount of mail you can keep in your account (those are their servers, after all). You may also have limitations on the size of the file attachments you can send and receive. And if you don't log in for a few months, your service may think you've bailed on them and delete your waiting mail.

Free Web-based mail services don't give you as much freedom to customize your mailbox as computer-based mail programs do, either. For instance, Gmail doesn't let you make your own mail folders. Yahoo Mail limits you to 15 mail rules (automated message filing).

Note: This chapter describes the two ways people check their email: in a Mac or PC program, or on the Web. But other people find both systems attractive. They'll sign up for a Web-based service to keep in touch while traveling, and keep their standard, PC-based email program for use at home or work. There's nothing wrong with having several email addresses from different types of email systems.

Table 14-1.

	Yahoo Mail	Gmail	Hotmail	Outlook Express	Outlook	Thunderbird	Eudora	Apple Mail
Storage limits	1 GB	2.5 GB	250 MB	Depends on your computer	Depends on your computer	Depends on your computer	Depends on your computer	Depends on your computer
Junk mail filters	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
HTML mail	Yes	No (Rich text only)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Display only
Spell checker	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multiple Mail Accounts	Yes	Yes ^[1]	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Extra Folders	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Mail Rules/ Filters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

^[1] The Gmail Manager extension for the Firefox and Mozilla browsers lets you keep an eye on new messages in all your Gmail accounts, if you happen to have more than one. Download it for free from the "Missing CD" page at www.missingmanuals.com.

WORD TO THE WISE
Email = Postcards

As noted previously, the typical email message may fly through dozens of computers on its way to its destination. An evildoer at any one of these locations could, in theory, have a look at what you wrote.

Now, that's pretty unlikely , and actual stories of this happening are virtually nonexistent. (Sure, newspaper headlines sometimes describe bad guys who were busted based on their email, but those messages are generally brought to light the moretraditional way: the recipient turned it in to the police.)

Still, a good rule of thumb for email safety is to never put anything into a plain email message that you wouldn't put on the back of a postcard. Be especially careful with personal info like credit card numbers or your Social Security digits.

The truly paranoid , and those who work in industries where corporate secrecy is key, should consider programs that protect your messages from random eyes. PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy, is a well-known program that encrypts your message into undecipherable gibberish; your recipient requires a serial number to unlock and read the message's true text.

The PGP software is available in a commercial version at www.pgp.com; an older freeware edition and instructions for using the program are at www.pgpi.org. Encrypting your mail can keep it more secure, but it may be a bit too much for messages like, "Don't forget to bring home Pampers."

14.1.3. Dedicated Email Programs

Most Internet service providers don't care what program you use as long as you configure it properly. All Windows-based PCs come with Outlook Express, and all Mac OS X systems come with Mail, so, if anything, you've already got one program you can use for email. And if you don't like what you've got, you can switch to something else.

14.1.3.1. Outlook Express

Many people look no further than Windows' Outlook Express (Start All Programs Outlook Express) to take care of their email. Legions have grown up with this freebie , tossed into every edition of Windows since 1996.

Outlook Express (see Figure 14-1) isn't particularly fancy, but it handles the basics very well. It can send, receive, delete, print, forward, sort , and file your email; manage your address book; send and receive files; and even block email from people you've marked as spammers, enemies, or just plain annoying.

Figure 14-1. Outlook Express lives on the Start menu of nearly every PC sold today. Like most email programs, Outlook Express stores your mail in folders along its left edge. Incoming mail moves straight into your inbox for you to read; your currently selected message appears in the Preview window. Your sent mail heads for the outbox , ready for Outlook Express to send. After sending the mail, Outlook Express places a copy of the message in your Sent Items folder for reference. Deleted mail goes into your Deleted Items folder. And Drafts contains mail you've started, but haven't yet finished.

Note: A Mac version of Outlook Express once existed, but it never made the leap to OS X. Microsoft still makes a very good email program for the Maccalled Entouragebut you have to buy it. It's part of Microsoft Office.

Pros . Outlook Express is fairly easy to use, free, and already on your PC. Many people fire it up and never turn back. Still, if you ever upgrade to a more powerful email program, your old email isn't trapped: Nearly every email program can import Outlook Express's messages and contacts. iPods can even carry your contacts from Outlook Express or Outlook.
Cons . Because it's used so widely, Outlook Express is a big target for viruses, worms, spammers, spyware, and other dark forces. The program shares Internet Explorer's vulnerabilities, as well, because it borrows Internet Explorer's code for displaying messages. And many viruses peek into Outlook Express's address book, emailing a disguised copy of themselves to everyone listed there.

You can minimize these threats by making sure Windows Update is set to Automatic, which lets Microsoft automatically patch newly discovered security problems. (To do so, choose Start Control Panel System and click the Automatic Updates tab.) Add an antivirus program (Section 21.2), and Outlook Express stays reasonably safe from viruses.

The biggest gripe about Outlook Express boils down to its lack of a spell checker. That's Microsoft's subtle way of prodding you to buy Outlook, the full-featured email program included with the pricey Microsoft Office. It's also a way to push you into buying Microsoft Word. (When you install Word, Outlook relies on Word's spell checker, giving you an easy way to proofread your outgoing email.)

14.1.3.2. Outlook

Outlook (www.microsoft.com/outlook) is Outlook Express's bigger, cooler , more talented older brother. You can buy it for around $100, or pay even more money and get it as part of Microsoft Office, the suite that brings Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to the party.

Outlook does more than just fetch your mail. It's a full-on personal information manager for Windows, meaning that it also has a calendar program and to-do list. Although it won't pick up your dry cleaning, it can send you little alerts to nag you into remembering to pick it up yourself.

Pros . Outlook mail is vast and versatile, allowing you to check messages from multiple email accounts and store them in folders and subfolders so you can keep track of all the correspondence on a project or with a particular group of people. There's a built-in dictionary, plus a thesaurus and links to research sites if you're working on long, complex messages. Outlook also has a built-in spam filter, although it's not much of a match for today's flood of junk mail.
Cons . Outlook has been plagued with many of the truck- sized security holes that have swallowed Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. The program is so feature-packed, it might be overkill if all you want to do is send and collect messages. And it costs a lot.

14.1.3.3. Thunderbird

Thunderbird (www.mozilla.org/thunderbird ) is a free, very good email program for Mac or Windows.

Note: It's brought to you by the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit organization that also unleashed the popular Firefox Web browser (Section 2.3). Both Thunderbird and Firefox are open source , meaning the programs' code is freely available for any programmer to inspect or modify. With everything on the drawing board, some miscreants can look for weak spots to unleash viruses. But this open approach also lets other programmers find potential flaws and fix them before the attacks occur.

So far, Thunderbird contains far fewer security problems than Outlook Express.

Pros . Thunderbird's open source underpinnings let programmers offer small add-on programs called extensions spam killers, address book enhancers , duplicate message removers, and so on. By downloading only the extensions you need from inside the program (Tools Extensions Get More Extensions), you can keep the program small, speedy, and free of long menus with unused features.

Like most competing email programs, Thunderbird automatically imports your information from Outlook Express (as well as from Outlook or Eudora), keeping your originals safe inside Outlook Express. Thunderbird looks and feels like Outlook Express, but with a few more features: A builtin RSS reader (Section 5.5), for instance, alerts you to updates on your favorite Web sites. New features appear almost daily as programmers release more extensions.
Cons . Although Mozilla's Web site is well written, with Frequently Asked Questions areas and a searchable support database, there's no phone number to call for free tech support. Instead, you have to seek help on the community forums (www.mozilla.org/support/ and, under the Thunderbird header, click Community Support Forums). Or, you can call a company called InfoSpan (1-888-586-4539) and pay $40 per tech-support problem.

14.1.3.4. Eudora

Eudora (www.eudora.com) was named after the esteemed Southern writer Eudora Welty, author of the classic short story "Why I Live at the P.O." It's been around for years and has a devoted following, most of whom are determined to cut down on the number of Microsoft products on their computers.

If that quest appeals to you, your biggest challenge is deciding which version is for you:

Paid Mode . The $50 version, used mainly by businesses, includes 12 months of free upgrades, six free calls to tech support (within the first year), and a spam filter.
Sponsored Mode . This free version lacks the spam filter and the free tech support. It also displays a small ad in the screen's bottom corner, as well as two ad buttons on the top menu.
Light Mode . If you find ads so offensive that you're willing to sacrifice the program's spell checker to rid yourself of them, choose this option.

All three versions of Eudora handle the same email basics as Outlook Express. Installation is easy, too: The program visits Outlook Express to import your email account settings as well as your previously received messages. (It only copies your messages; your originals remain safe with Outlook Express.) When the program finishes installing itself, it appears on the screen with all your old email waiting for you.

Pros . Eudora comes in both PC and Mac versions, a plus if you find yourself computing on both types of computers. To help keep your different email conversations separate, you can assign different colors to different "conversations" (chains of related email back-and-forths).

The program also makes extensive use of tabs buttons that resemble filing-folder tabs. Click a tab on your Mailboxes window, for instance, and the window switches from a row of in and outboxes to a file browser, a handy way to drag a file into an outgoing email. Click the Mailboxes tab to bring back your inbox, outbox, and other mailboxes.
Cons . Many people find Eudora to be overkill, yet, frustratingly, it lacks some of the details of Outlook Express. For example, it doesn't show how many unread messages are waiting in each folder, nor does it let you create and nestle subfolders inside your inbox to track different projects. And although the ads try to be unobtrusive , it's annoying when a misplaced click on your part interrupts your workflow with a word from the sponsor.

14.1.3.5. Apple Mail

This freebie mail program that comes with Mac OS X has an elegant look and meshes well with the system's other staples , including the iChat instant messaging program and the Mac OS X Address Book.

For example, if you're logged into iChat while you're catching up on your correspondence, Mail displays a green dot next to the names of people in your Mac OS X Address Book who are also online. If you want to contact the person directly instead of sending off a whole email, just click the name in the mailbox window and press -Shift-I to open an iChat message neatly addressed to your pal.

Mail is smartly designed, thanks to Apple's attention to visual detail (subtle colors and sleek icons, as shown in Figure 14-2). A software assistant guides you through setting up Mail for the first time and can import old messages from Eudora, Entourage, Outlook Express for Mac, Netscape mail, and Claris Emailer. You can send and receive mail from multiple accounts, all in the same window.

Figure 14-2. Apple Mail, which comes free with the Mac OS X operating system, is Apple's counterpart to Microsoft's Outlook Express for Windows. The program handles all the standard mail chores and includes a Junk Filter that shovels spam into its own mailbox so you don't have to worry about it touching your real messages.

Apple Mail has its own spell checker and junk mail filter. Using the Spotlight file-finding feature of Mac OS X 10.4 and later, Mail can quickly search through thousands of messages for that one note you need with the directions to the wedding on Saturdaywithout even having to switch to the Mail program first. When someone sends you several picture attachments, click the Slideshow button in the top part of the message window, and Mail plays the photos one at a time as a full-screen slideshow. It also syncs up great with .Mac mail on the Web (Section 14.1.4.4).

The program has a few bugs , and it sometimes breaks long URLs pasted into messages so the links won't work when clicked. But, overall, Apple Mail can easily handle most standard mail chores and look good doing it.

Tip: If you want to really learn the ups and downs of Mail inside and out, visit the Hawk Wings blog at www. hawkwings .net. Tips, tricks, and workarounds for using Mail are plentiful. For example, to keep Mail from stomping on your long URLs, the site suggests going to TinyURL (http://tinyurl.com) and pasting your big unwieldy Web address into the form on the main page. Once you click the Make TinyURL! button, the site converts your lengthy Web address into something like http://tinyurl.com/okum2, which is short enough to survive without the Mail program breaking it.

14.1.4. Web-Based Email Services

In the B.G. era (Before Google), most Web-based mail services offered only a couple of megabytes of mail storage10 megs if you were lucky. For some people, that was enough, although 10 megabytes can fill up awfully quickly thanks to the Internet's spam plague.

UP TO SPEED
Alphabet Soup: IMAP, POP3, and SMTP

When it comes to actually setting up an email account for the first time, the onslaught of acronyms can seem overwhelming. POP3? IMAP? SMTP? Whaaaaaa ?

All three terms refer to email protocols : ways of sending, storing, and retrieving messages so every computer along the delivery chain knows what to expect. Your ISP decides which one of these you use, so check the account information and setup instructions you got from them when you signed up. Here's what it all means.

POP3 (Post Office Protocol, Version 3) . This is still the most common way of receiving email; most ISPs still use POP mail, as it's casually known.

In a POP mail system, your computer picks up your email from a centrally located mail-server computer. Think of this server as a post office that holds your mail until you and your computer come get it.

When you turn on your email program and ask it to check your mail, your POP program (Eudora, Outlook Express, Mail, or whatever) presents your account password to the mail server and asks if there are any new messages. If so, the server sends any new messages and then deletes its own copies of those files so it doesn't fill up with old mail.

Most POP3 mail servers can hold around 10 megabytes of messages for each person. To prevent the dreaded bounce (messages returned to sender), check your mail frequently.

Some Web-based mail services, including Gmail, can forward messages to your POP3 program at no charge (Section 14.1.4.3); others, like Hotmail, want you to pay for the privilege.

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) . This offers a newer way of getting your email; it's gaining some acceptance among providers like AOL and .Mac.

Unlike POP3 mail, where you download messages to your computer from a mail server, your IMAP mail stays on the server. You can move from computer to computer, or from computer to Black- Berrythe messages are always there, organized in folders just the way you left them. Large corporations, university mail systems, and other large networks typically use IMAP.

If you don't know whether your ISP uses POP or IMAP, call its customer service department and ask, or check its Web site for the email settings and mail server addresses you need. You'll need that information when you set up your email program for the first time and it asks you what to use for your incoming mail server.

As for your outgoing mail server, choose SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) and enter any other information your ISP has provided for security or authentication purposeswhich varies by ISP. (SMTP refers to the system Outlook Express and many other mail programs use to send out your messages.)

But then Gmail arrived with a mighty whomp in 2004, offering each person a whole gigabyte of space to store mail (that's more than 1,000 megabytes).

Suddenly, the rest of the Webmail companies had to play catch-up. Yahoo and Apple's .Mac service now offer a gigabyte of space, too; Hotmail upped its allowance to 250 megabytes. Meanwhile, Gmail has quietly continued to raise its total; it's now nearly 3 gigabytes per person.

14.1.4.1. Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Mail (http://mail.yahoo.com) offers a one-gigabyte mail limit, plus virus scanning and spam filtering. If a virus is discovered in one of your incoming messages, Yahoo cleans it for you with Norton Antivirus (Section 21.2), disarming its evil payload before it reaches your computer. The site also looks for mass-produced junk mail and reroutes the offers for Rolexes and questionable pharmaceuticals into a Bulk mail folder.

As for mail handling, Yahoo lets you set up to 15 filters (sorting rules) to help compartmentalize your mail; for example, it can autofile all the messages from people in your book club into a single folder (Section 14.4.1). To keep annoying people out of your hair, you can block up to 500 addresses from sending mail to you. Yahoo Mail accepts incoming and outgoing file attachments of up to 10 megabytes, which is usually enough for several photos or a PowerPoint presentation file.

The QuickBuilder feature checks the return addresses of the people who've mailed you and lets you add them to your Yahoo Address Book with a mouse click.

And if you travel a lot, Yahoo Mail collects messages from other mail servers (like your work mail or your ISP mail) so you can read it all on your Yahoo account page.

Note: While other Web-based email services just give you the one email address with your account, Yahoo gives you two. Once you sign up and set up your primary account, you can make up a secondary email address. Mail from both accounts show up on the same screen; a menu lets you specify which account to use when you're composing a new message. Having a second email address can be extremely useful, as described in Section 14.1.2.

Like most free mail services, Yahoo sticks little advertisements at the bottom of your outgoing messages. If you find the ads cheesy and annoying, you can pay Yahoo $20 a year for a Mail Plus account, which gives you ad-free messages, two gigabytes of mail storage, a better spam filter, and the ability to download Yahoo messages with an email client like Outlook. Paying for a Plus account also ensures that Yahoo won't discard all the messages in your account if you don't log in for four monthsanother risk of free accounts.

14.1.4.2. Gmail

With nearly three gigabytes of storage, text-formatting tools, a spell checker, sortable labels, and the super-searchability you'd expect from a Google product, Gmail (http://gmail.google.com) is the Webmail service the other guys wish they'd thought of first.

Note: At the time of this writing, you can receive a Gmail account in only one of two ways: through an invitation from an existing account holder or by visiting the Web site with your PC and entering your cellphone number. Google then sends your cellphone a text message with an invitation code that you enter at the Gmail site to complete the sign-up process. The cellphone-number business is Google's clever way of ensuring that each person can sign up for only one or maybe two Gmail accounts per person. The point is to thwart spammers and commercial entities who might otherwise abuse the Gmail privilege by snagging up hundreds of gigabytes of free online space.

Once you get a Gmail account, you don't have to worry about hitting your mail limit for quite awhile. You get a spam filter to help block junk, and Google scans for and blocks viruses in attachments; in fact, Google blocks anything that's an executable file (that is, a program). (While games and shareware programs are executable files, so are viruses.)

You can't make your own folders in Gmail, but you can set up labels for messages from certain people and then sort your mail by label. Click the Edit Labels link on the side of the Gmail window to create a label. In the Gmail Setting area, you can set up filters to tag messages from certain people with one of your custom labels by choosing Filters Create New Filter. When messages are filtered and labeled, the label name appears next to the subject line. You can sort mail by label when you click a label name on the left side of the Gmail window.

All messages with the same subject line are merged into one big thread Gmail calls a conversation (Figure 14-3) that saves you the trouble of digging through your inbox looking for the first few exchanges in your 39-message thread about who's bringing the Chex Mix to the Oscar party next Sunday.

Nor do you have to scroll through all of these messages to see the back-and-forth; Gmail collapses all the message headers into one line until you click a particular one to open it.

Figure 14-3. Gmail neatly stacks messages in the same thread into "conversations," so you never have to dig around your mailbox looking for the message that started the topic. Click one of the message headers in the conversation to see what it said.

Gmail generates money for Google Inc. in an ingenious and controversial way: It places ads on your screenclearly labeled and off to the rightwhen you're reading your incoming messages or looking at old messages in your Sent folder. And they're targeted adsthat is, ads that pertain to what you're reading. For example, if a friend writes to ask when you get back from your trip to the Napa Valley, you may see ads for California tourism or wine merchants beside the message.

(The controversial part: It makes privacy advocates get all wiggy to know that something is reading their messages to find out what they're about. Of course, the truth is, Gmail's inanimate software robots are doing the reading, not actual people.)

Google's text-scanning powers can be used for good, too, especially if you use Google Calendar (Section 20.3). When someone sends you a message about going out to dinner at 8:00 on Saturday night, Gmail recognizes a date and time; you can schedule the event by clicking the Google Calendar link in the Gmail window. Google automatically pops the info into your schedule without you having to type a thing.

One of the coolest things about Gmail is that Google doesn't charge you if you want to download the mail from your account using a standalone email program like Outlook Express or Mail. You just have to pop into your Gmail settings, click the "Forwarding and POP" tab, and tell Gmail to allow POP downloads. (For the poop on POP, check out Section 14.1.4.) You then have to set up a Gmail account within your email client (Section 14.1.4.4).

14.1.4.3. MSN Hotmail

Microsoft offers several different flavors of Web-based mail: regular free MSN Hotmail, $20-a-year MSN Hotmail Plus, or $10-a- month MSN Premium. When you cruise over to www.hotmail.com and click the Sign Up button for the free account, Microsoft slyly plants you on an up-sell page with all three of its plans laid out so you can see how many features you get if you cough up the cash.

Note: For $35 a year, Microsoft will sell you a Hotmail account with your own name on it, as in bruce@brucewayne.com. The company calls the service MSN Personal Address. (You can check to see if your name's available at http://join.msn.com/en-us/personaladdress/overview.) People with peculiar names may have more luck than those with more common family namesyou're definitely not going to get john@johnsmith.com at this pointbut it never hurts to check.

As you might expect, the free account gives you the bare minimum. But for many people, it's enough to get by: a 250-megabyte mailbox, junk-mail and phish filters (Section 21.5), virus-scanning, and the ability to swap attachments up to 10 megabytes each. The low-budget Hotmail includes some nice touches, though, including fancy backgrounds, fonts, and layout styles for your messages, plus an online calendar for keeping track of your schedule. You need to check your account at least once every 30 days, or Microsoft will empty out your box.

MSN Hotmail Plus gets you a two-gigabyte mailbox, ad-free messages, and the ability to download and manage your mail with the Outlook Express email client. You can also send attachments up to 20 MB, and you don't have to worry about your account getting whacked if you go backpacking through Europe for a month.

If you aim for the top and get the MSN Premium account, you get special Windows-only software: MSN Internet, which is like Microsoft's version of America Online, sort of a gated Internet community with some members -only material and services like Chat (Section 15.2.11). MSN Premium includes firewall (Section 21.6.1) and parental controls, plus free access to the Encarta online encyclopedia (Section 4.6) and online photo-sharing tools.

Note: As part of its Office Live system of online software (Section 20.2.1), Microsoft has another Webbased mail plan called Outlook Live. When you sign up for $60 a year, you get email and a Webbased version of Microsoft Outlook (Section 14.1.3.2) to keep all your contacts and calendars within reach from a Web browser.

14.1.4.4. .Mac

Apple Computer's $100-a-year .Mac service gives you a Webmail account along with a spiffy @mac.com email address. Although it's not really an ISP, .Mac is a suite of useful tools and programs that benefit Mac OS X fanslike online file storage, a slick backup program, free Mac software, tutorials and free book chapters, online photo-sharing and Web-page creation, and more. (You can sign up at www.mac.com.)

You can read your .Mac messages either on the .Mac Web site or using a regular email program like Entourage or Apple's Mail program (Section 14.1.3.5).

The .Mac service uses the IMAP protocol (Section 14.1.4), which means that messages you see on the .Mac Web site are also copied to your desktop email program. These messages don't show up as new mail, however, because .Mac knows you've already looked at them. Instead, they're marked as already read.

You can also manually synchronize your .Mac mail on all the computers you use, so each machine is up to date with the latest mail.