Outlook Express 6 on WinXP and this list

[C E Macfarlane]

Please see below further OT discussion, otherwise feel free to ignore ...

www.macfh.co.uk/CEMH.html

>     It is not a good idea to be dependent solely on an email
>     address provided by
>     an ISP.

Seconded.

By all means use one of the free providers suggested, but be aware ...

:-(	At least as far as newsgroups are concerned, gmail has a reputation with
some of us of being such a spamhaus that all posts from it go straight into
our killfiles, no matter who the sender.  However, I should come clean and
admit that nevertheless I do have a couple of gmail addresses, as backups
for others.

:-(	Many free providers, including both the ones suggested, really, really
want you to opt into things or click on things that enable them to gather
data about you.  These days, it is becoming very difficult to obtain a
simple free email address without strings attached.  I used to have a free
Yahoo address, but I closed it after the umpteenth update that made using
the web GUI such a pain that it really wasn't worth the hassle any more  -
I'd been forced to retrieve or completely rebuild my Yahoo home page for
about the third time in as many years.  I replaced it with a gmail address,
but even there I had to opt out of a load of google-app-crap that I had no
interest in.

:-)	But there is some good news.  For little more than the cost per annum of
a few cans of beer, you used to be able to, and hopefully still can,
purchase a domain with a DIFFERENT provider from your ISP, and set up both
webhost, if relevant, and email redirection to whereever your ISP currently
happens to be.  This means that you can use a single, consistent set of
email addresses based on your own domain, so your family and friends don't
have to keep updating their address books every time you change ISP, but the
hosting is still done by your ISP, so you only have to pay the minimal cost
of the redirection service.  However, be aware that with this arrangement
you can still fall foul of the problems outlined above by RS, so you need to
be able to administer your domain by a free email independent of your ISP,
so that if necessary you can change the redirection after your ISP has
closed down the destination addresses.  This is what I did for some years
before ...

:-)	... moving on to the next step up, which is to host your email on your
own domain.  This is the best possible arrangement, but the cost of buying
seperate domain hosting, rather than simply a redirection service, may well
be prohibitive if you do not run a website and your concern is solely about
email hosting.  And you still need free email addresses for backup
administrator access, in case you need to change your web-hosting provider.