Email and webmail

Email

To set up emailEmail: A way of sending messages, text and computer files between computers via the phone line. you need:

• a computer
• an internet connection via an analogue modem (ordinary phone line) or terminal adaptor (ISDN) or broadband modem (ADSL and cable)
• an account with an ISP (Internet Service Provider)
• email software

Your Internet Service Provider will give you an email account, a password and a mailbox such as yourname@hostname.co.uk. You can also set up an email account with a mailbox and passwords with non-ISPs such as Google and Hotmail.

With a dial-up connection, you have to pay the cost of your internet phone calls (local rate), and in most cases a subscription to your provider (though some are free). A broadband connection is 'always on', with only a flat-rate subscription. Very few people pay by the minute nowadays and the majority of people pay a monthly fee for broadband access.

Anti-virus scanning is becoming standard on email accounts and many email providers now offer an anti spam (electonic junk mail) service.

Webmail

Webmailwebmail: Web-based email which can be set up and accessed via a web portal from any computer in the world., as its name suggests, is web-based email. To use webmail, you do not need any email software - just a computer connected to the internet via any one of the connection types listed above, and a browser.

Users simply sign up to the webmail service of a web portal such as MSN or Yahoo. They are given a unique user name and a personal mailbox on the portal's email server, and they can then send and receive messages via a special web page.

Webmail accounts are often free and tend to offer large amounts of storage (up to 4GB in some cases).

The advantage of webmail is that users can receive and send mail from any computer in the world with internet access. If you have a dial-up connection you can download your emails and then read them offline to avoid staying on-line for long periods.

Some ISPs will enable their regular email customers to access their mailbox via webmail as well as through the email software on their PC.