There's more. Many people use their ISP e-mail address and a Hotmail or Yahoo address. One because it came with their Internet service and the other because it works from a browser. That gives them the worst of both worlds. The ISP address is bad because it may change over time and the other one is bad because you get loads of advertising and spam.
Here's what I'm getting to: You can get a single address that will be good as long as you want it with a company that won't send you any advertising and won't sell your information to others and you can use this address for all your correspondence, both from home via your e-mail program and from other computers via their web browsers. It will give you access to mail sent to it and to your ISP e-mail account at the same time.
Here's how.
The best way is not the most expensive way. It is to buy your own
domain name. You can do this for about $9 per year.
You'll have it as long as you want it and you
control it completely. I, for example, bought the requa.net domain and
have the
jimmy@requa.net
address.
There are variations on this (both cheaper and more expensive) that give you
various features such as more addresses and even your own website.
My next recommendation is a service called myrealbox owned by Novell and used to showcase their latest technology.
There are several ways the service can work:
It's free and they give you all
sorts of goodies.
An expensive but nice service is netaddress for $40 per year. You get lots of nice features, and an @usa.net address.
The first time I switched Internet Service Providers and realized I was going
to have to send change of address notices to more people than I could
find, I signed up and got
requa@usa.net
which seemed easy for people to remember.
It was free in those days. I'll be dropping it when renewal time comes.
There are many ways to do these things. If you get stuck and need help or
just want more advice,
write to me.
I'll be glad to help.