With free email services widely available, NetGuide readers are asking a common question: where should they have their email delivered if they're using different ISPs?

Many are keeping their original Internet provider while trying out the new free services and have ended up with several email addresses. If they aren't confused, their correspondents may well be. It's a bit like owning five houses and having to go round checking your five snail mail addresses. Life can be confusing enough by the time you check your home letterbox, call minder answerphone service, voice mail, mobile.

Messages and Text messages
Free Web-based email helps keeps it simple. It means you only have to check your online equivalent of your PO Box. Web-based email means you have just one email home that you access from a Web site from any computer anywhere in the world.

Email is not like snail mail. It arrives at your Internet service provider and then you download it when you log on to your email program. Around New Zealand, we get our mail delivered (usually) by NZ Post. If you change address, you can pay for a re-direction order that means NZ Post will divert your mail. With many of us changing Internet service providers - or trying at least more than one - you should know that if you dump your current provider that company is not going to divert your mail to your new Internet provider (a rival company). You lose your email address the moment your account closes down.

These days we hand out our email address to people as freely as we do our phone number - more freely in some cases. So you need an email address for life. The Web-based email providers give you one of those - so long as they don't go bust. Hotmail, these days owned by Microsoft, has been the market leader with millions of accounts. To set up an account

Once secured, you will able to check your email from any computer - and, if you're travelling, you'll find Internet cafes popping up in the most unlikely places. Not all of them are actual cafes -travellers wanting to check their email has become such lucrative business, many cybercafes are just places with computers and areas where you can make cheap phone calls home. Call into any such place in Sydney, London, Paris or wherever and you'll see rows of screens with people all checking their Hotmail or similar service.

The difference
Many ISPs, as they expand their range of services, also provide a service by which you can access your mail from them while overseas. If you want to keep your email program with one particular Internet provider that's fine - but the day may come when you want to swap Internet providers.

When you sign up with your ISP you're given an email address - something like userID@yourISP.co.nz. Email provided by your ISP requires the use of a email program such as Outlook Express or Eudora that needs to be set up to receive mail from the Internet provider.

There are a number of different programs you can use. The recent virus scare has prompted some people to abandon using Microsoft Outlook and use a program such as Pegasus or Eudora instead.

Email programs are like browsers - we all have our preferences. Some of us prefer all the features a program like Outlook or Outlook Express provides. Others just want a simple program to read their email without bells, whistles, calendars and search facilities.

If you sign up for a Web-based email service, you don't have to install any special email software. You just go to the Web site, put in your email login name and password and the email box opens. And, if you still have an account with your ISP, you should also be able to access those messages through the Web-based service.

The services you can expect from a free Web email service include: Junk mail filtering, which scans your incoming messages for junk mail and places it in a special junk mail folder. Most of these unwanted messages are turned back before they even reach you.

By activating this feature, you have a second line of defence against unsolicited commercial email. Sadly though, these Web-based services do attract spam (junk) mail easily and it does slip through even if you try to block it. It can be a good idea to have two addresses at the Web-based services. In fact, because it's free you can have as many as you like. Give one of those addresses only to close family and friends. Once you start subscribing to services or using your email address widely, you'll find spam will follow.

Signatures, which allow you to automatically add contact details or personalised greetings to the end of your outgoing messages. External mail collection means you can collect email from all your external email accounts (such as your ISP account) into one convenient location. A forwarding address, to forward all your incoming mail to another email address (eg your work, home, or school email address).

A reminder, delivered to your email inbox daily whether it be for birthdays, appointments, deadlines or public holidays.

An address book, for keeping track of friends' email addresses and contact details. Often services include the ability to create groups, which means you can send an email to multiple addresses from your address book by clicking on a key name.

Folders, for storing emails from different people.

How and why
If Web-based email is generally free, how does it make money? There are usually catches. When you sign up for free Web-based email, the service displays banner advertising to you while you use your email account. This is how the free email providers finance their operations. You have to put up with such banners sometimes in the middle of your email messages. When you sign up, watch the fine print. Watch for little boxes with a tick in them giving them permission to onsell your email address or allowing them to bombard you with their own junk mail.

People who use email from work find it convenient to keep their personal messages separate from their work messages. You can use a free Web-based email service for your personal correspondence and your company's email system for business messages. Additionally, you don't have to store personal email on your company's system. All messages in your email account are securely stored in a central location that you access via the Internet with the password you select.

Free in New Zealand
Leading Net companies such as Yahoo, and Microsoft all offer free Web-based email. Clear Net has also introduced a service called Webmail while Xtra has Xtramail. Another trend has been for niche sites to offer Web-based email so you help promote their site by having an email address with their site name in it - such as at Kiwi band Shihad's site where you can have an address like musicfan@shihad.com or snowboarding site Boarderzone where you can become bigairbill@boarderzone.net.

Making a choice
You could join up with multiple Web mail providers, but it probably pays to pick one and stick with it. Is biggest best?
In my opinion - yes. In the past five years I've used all the services mentioned here. They've all had down times, filters have failed and they've all delivered mail late, or not at all. Some are overpopulated with useless add-ons that distract from conducting efficient email business. The benefit of a larger provider is that public scrutiny forces them to fix any problems relatively quickly. There is no excuse for security holes - and Hotmail has certainly had its share - but the bigger the provider, the more it finds the eye of the client will be focused on its service.

Major mailboxes
If you think an email address that reads yourname@hotmail.com or yourname@mail.com is mundane, then don't settle for it. Be creative! There are more than 10,000 domain name alternatives to choose from, including journalist.com, Webmaster.com, teacher.com, lawyer.com, music.com, stupid.com and a definite Kiwi favourite - rugby.com.

Many of the world's biggest sports teams will get you a personal yourname@nameof theteam address.