CLIENT-BASED EMAIL
When email arrives for you it is stored on an email server. To access your mail you must either go to the server and read it there or download it to your computer using an email client. In some cases, such as Mozilla and Opera, the email client is bundled with the web browser.
Outlook is geared toward corporate use. It has task lists, appointment reminders, sharable calendars, etc. Since we recommend MS Office, we also recommend Outlook as your email client.
A commercial email client is called Eudora. It’s around $50 at www.eudora.com
WEB-BASED EMAIL
Some portals such as AOL and Yahoo use web-based email. That means you never download your mail, you view it on the server. Microsoft’s Hotmail is similar as is the new Gmail from Google. Google’s twist is that it is free and gives you lots of storage, but any email you send or receive will have Google ads attached based on the contents of your email.
TIP: If you are in business you should have your own domain with your own email (i.e. you@yourbusiness.com). Business people with addresses like obscurename@aol.com are generally not taken seriously as businesspeople. Email addresses from free email accounts like Yahoo.com and Hotmail.com are often blocked because of the large number of scammers using them.
If you have your own domain you will download your mail with your email client but will have the option of accessing your email on the web through your web site’s control panel. That way if you are on the road you can still receive, send, delete, etc, through a web-based interface.
SERVER-BASED EMAIL
If you have your own server set up you can have an email server on it like Microsoft’s Exchange Server, RockCliff or iMail. Your local server would receive all of the mail for you or your company, which can then be accessed from any workstation.
