email

Gmail 
Google raised the bar for Web-based email services when it introduced its Gmail (gmail.google.com) service. Unfortunately, at press time, Gmail was still officially in beta testing and not publicly available. While Gmail invites are more readily available than ever, you’ll still need to know someone with a Gmail account in order to score an invite. 

With 2GB of storage, Gmail provides more storage capacity than any other Web-based service. In addition, Gmail also has a liberal inactive account policy. It takes nine months of inactivity before Gmail deletes an account. Gmail is also fairly liberal when it comes to dealing with over-limit accounts. Gmail holds incoming mail for several days, giving you a chance to delete older messages and make room for new messages. If you make enough room in time, the pending messages are delivered to your account, otherwise they’re returned to the sender. 

You cannot send or receives messages larger than 10MB on Gmail, and you will receive a warning message if you attempt to send a file that exceeds the limit. Incoming messages larger than 10MB are returned to the sender. For safety reasons Gmail will not let you send or receive EXE attachments, even if they’re part of a ZIP file. 

In addition to its generous storage policies, Gmail also sports a unique interface. Rather than display every single email message in your inbox, Gmail groups related messages into a “conversation.” Conversations that include new messages are placed at the top of your inbox and appear in bold. To read the newest message, simply click the conversation. The new message opens automatically with previous messages represented by tabs above. Click any tab to read an older message. 

Gmail also has handy ways to track conversations. You can track certain conversations by placing a star next to it and view all starred conversations by clicking the Starred link. Instead of organizing mail by folders, Gmail lets you apply labels. You can create and apply a label to existing conversations or create a filter to automatically label incoming messages. Clicking a label on the left side of the page displays all conversations with the given label. The advantage of this approach is that it allows you apply multiple labels to a single message. 

Gmail also includes a spam filter. To label a message as spam, check the box next to the message and click the Report Spam button. According to Gmail the more spam you report, the better the filter becomes at detecting spam. If you find a legitimate message that accidentally got placed in your Spam folder, you can click the Not Spam button to correct the problem. 

MSN Hotmail 
Hotmail has been around for a long time and was one of the original Web-based email services before it was purchased by Microsoft. Today, MSN Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) is still going strong. 

New MSN Hotmail members receive just 25MB of storage capacity, but after 30 days that limit increases to 250MB. MSN Hotmail also makes it more difficult to retain older messages. It takes just 30 days for MSN Hotmail to mark an account inactive. All email and contact information are deleted at that point. If you log in within 60 days of your account becoming inactive, you’ll be able to reactivate it, but deleted information is permanently lost. Junk email is deleted after seven days, and email in your Sent Messages folder is removed after 30 days. If you’re over your storage limit, new messages are automatically returned, and MSN Hotmail reserves the right to delete messages if you’re over your allotted capacity. 

MSN Hotmail Plus does offer additional benefits for $19.95 a year. MSN Hotmail Plus members receive 2GB of storage, and they don’t need to worry about inactive accounts. MSN Hotmail Plus users can also send and receive email using Outlook or Outlook Express, and they can send messages as large 20MB (compared to the 10MB limit placed on free accounts). 

According to MSN Hotmail, incoming messages are subjected to a virus scan and potentially dangerous attachments are removed. This allows MSN Hotmail users to send and receive EXE files. It also offers some protection from other potentially harmful files that aren’t EXE files. 

As with Gmail, MSN Hotmail includes some spam tools. To adjust the spam filter, click the Options link, click Mail on the left side of the page, and click Junk E-Mail Protection. Click Junk E-Mail Filter and chose between Low, Enhanced, and Exclusive protection levels. Exclusive blocks all email not from someone in your contacts list. You can also mark individual messages as spam and opt to block specific senders. Alternatively, you can create a Safe List and block all messages from individuals not on your safe list. 

Yahoo! Mail 
Another popular Web-based email service is Yahoo! Mail (mail.yahoo.com). Yahoo! Mail has slightly more liberal storage policies than MSN Hotmail, but it still doesn’t offer as much capacity as Gmail. 

Yahoo! Mail users receive 1GB of storage space, and accounts are only deactivated if they experience more than four months of inactivity. Yahoo! removes any existing email after it deactivates an account, and no new messages to the account are accepted. Because your Yahoo! Mail address is associated with your Yahoo! ID, however, you can always resurrect your old account at a later time. 

Like MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail scans incoming and outgoing email attachments for viruses. The antivirus protection allows you to receive attachments that some Web services (such as Gmail) block. Executable files are the primary example. Yahoo! Mail also includes spam controls. SpamGuard is automatically enabled and channels suspected spam to a Bulk folder. You can decide to keep messages in this folder for a month, two weeks, one week, or you can opt to delete spam immediately (although we don’t recommend this option as any spam filter can occasionally mark legitimate messages as spam). Messages in your Bulk and Trash folders do not count toward your storage quota (although Yahoo! may permanently delete messages in your Trash folder at any time). 

MSN Hotmail is a bit more restrictive than other Web-based email services. If you don't login within a 30-day span, you'll lose all email and contact information associated with your account. 
 
If you do fill up your 1GB account, you won’t be able to receive any new email until you delete enough content to fit under your storage quota. This is similar to MSN Hotmail’s approach, except that Yahoo! Mail does not reserve the right to delete messages for you. 

Like MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! offers premium services. Its Yahoo! Mail Plus costs $19.99 a year and includes a total of 2GB of storage, a custom spam filter, the ability to create email aliases that act as a sort of disposable email address for doing business online, and the ability to send and receive messages as large as 20MB. Yahoo! Mail Plus users can also download their Yahoo! Mail using a desktop email client. For $35 a year, users can get up to five custom email addresses with their own domain name, but all other features are similar to the free Yahoo! Mail account.