Email Options
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When it comes to email you have two choices. You can either have all your email go into one computer or you can access your email from any computer that has a connection to the internet.
If you take the first choice, once you’ve downloaded your email into your computer, it is there. It will always be there, whether you have an internet connection or not. It will actually reside within your computer. This is generally called “POP” email. If you want to know what “POP” stands for you can look it up on plenty of web sites. Programs like Outlook Express or Outlook or Thunderbird generally use POP email.
The alternative is web based email. This is email that is not stored on your computer but on a web server and you access it by logging in.
The advantage of POP email is that the files are stored in your computer. Unfortunately, that is also the disadvantage because if your computer is lost or stolen or dies… so does your email. When you want to “nuke & pave” your computer (that is, format the hard drive and reinstall the operating system fresh) you will need to back up your email, and backing up email is not nearly as easy as backing up documents. Email is finicky. You got to back it up right or it’s gone.
One other “not so nice” thing about POP email is that usually people use POP email with an email account that is tied to an internet service provider. For example, you might have a Telus email account. If you switch out of Telus, your Telus email account is no longer any good. If you have one of the web based accounts, they are independent from whoever you get your internet access from.
The main benefits of web based email (such as Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo) are two fold. First, you do not need to back it up. Second, you can log into your account and access both your email and your contacts from any computer. If you lose your computer or your hard drive dies, it makes no difference to your email. If you go on a trip and borrow someone else’s computer, you can easily log into your own email, complete with your email contacts.
Because I use two different computers regularly (and probably even if I didn’t) I prefer web based email. And of the three I mentioned above, my preference is Gmail. It doesn’t have a whole lot of junk and it seems more professional. If you have several email accounts, you can have Gmail act as a central collection agency and pull them all into your Gmail account.
If you are afraid that your web based email isn’t backed up (for example, let’s say you have Gmail and you are afraid that one day Gmail will disappear off the face of the earth), you can always open a Yahoo or Hotmail account and use that only as an automatic backup to your Gmail account (so that everything that goes to Gmail gets copied to a second web based email service). It’s not all that difficult, but you can set up a Yahoo account to automatically copy all the email that you get in your Gmail account (or the other way around). All these web based email services are free to use.
Bottom Line: Get yourself a Gmail account and you won’t have to worry about losing your email in case your computer dies - and you’ll be able to get your email from any computer that is online.
If you take the first choice, once you’ve downloaded your email into your computer, it is there. It will always be there, whether you have an internet connection or not. It will actually reside within your computer. This is generally called “POP” email. If you want to know what “POP” stands for you can look it up on plenty of web sites. Programs like Outlook Express or Outlook or Thunderbird generally use POP email.
The alternative is web based email. This is email that is not stored on your computer but on a web server and you access it by logging in.
The advantage of POP email is that the files are stored in your computer. Unfortunately, that is also the disadvantage because if your computer is lost or stolen or dies… so does your email. When you want to “nuke & pave” your computer (that is, format the hard drive and reinstall the operating system fresh) you will need to back up your email, and backing up email is not nearly as easy as backing up documents. Email is finicky. You got to back it up right or it’s gone.
One other “not so nice” thing about POP email is that usually people use POP email with an email account that is tied to an internet service provider. For example, you might have a Telus email account. If you switch out of Telus, your Telus email account is no longer any good. If you have one of the web based accounts, they are independent from whoever you get your internet access from.
The main benefits of web based email (such as Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo) are two fold. First, you do not need to back it up. Second, you can log into your account and access both your email and your contacts from any computer. If you lose your computer or your hard drive dies, it makes no difference to your email. If you go on a trip and borrow someone else’s computer, you can easily log into your own email, complete with your email contacts.
Because I use two different computers regularly (and probably even if I didn’t) I prefer web based email. And of the three I mentioned above, my preference is Gmail. It doesn’t have a whole lot of junk and it seems more professional. If you have several email accounts, you can have Gmail act as a central collection agency and pull them all into your Gmail account.
If you are afraid that your web based email isn’t backed up (for example, let’s say you have Gmail and you are afraid that one day Gmail will disappear off the face of the earth), you can always open a Yahoo or Hotmail account and use that only as an automatic backup to your Gmail account (so that everything that goes to Gmail gets copied to a second web based email service). It’s not all that difficult, but you can set up a Yahoo account to automatically copy all the email that you get in your Gmail account (or the other way around). All these web based email services are free to use.
Bottom Line: Get yourself a Gmail account and you won’t have to worry about losing your email in case your computer dies - and you’ll be able to get your email from any computer that is online.
