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Web-based e-mail is coming into its own in '98. The bigplus: When your e-mail is stored on a Web site, you can check itfrom any computer; there's no special softwarerequired. That means your e-mail is as close as thenearest "cyber cafe" in any city worldwide. Ifyou're in Singapore and your computer is at home, you can popinto the airport's Internet depot, pay a few dollars to rent acomputer, log on to the Web, and read and respond to your mail.
Proof of the growing popularity of Web-based e-mail is that forsome months, AOL has been testing NetMail by giving members who areusing recent editions of Microsoft Internet Explorer the ability tofetch their mail from a Web site (for more information, go tohttp://www.aol.com). AndMicrosoft recently bought Hotmail (http://www.hotmail.com) with theintention of turning the Web-based mail service into a Web-basedpost office for Microsoft Network (MSN) subscribers.
Don't use MSN or AOL? Don't feel left out. FreeWeb-based e-mail is easy to find. Excite (http://www.excite.com),Lycos (< a href=http://www.lycos.com>http://www.lycos.com),Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com)and even Entrepreneur (http://mail.entrepreneurmag.com)offer it, and diligent surfers will stumble across many moreproviders. One tip: In setting up a Web-based e-mail account, lookfor a stable provider that's been on the Web for many months.E-mail seems simple, but bugs have riddled some systems, and othershave suffered from security flaws. So choose wisely when setting upa new mailbox.
To contact Robert McGarvey, visit his Web site at http://members.aol.com/rjmcgarvey
