Electronic messaging made easy.

E-mail is an electronic version of sending a letter, only with distinct advantages; you can send it at any time of the day without leaving your home or office. What's more, it will arrive in the receiver's mailbox minutes later, even if the receiver lives on the other side of the world. Mind you, the person still has to check their mailbox to get the message.

To use e-mail, you need software called a mail client. Popular e-mail clients for PC are Qualcomm Eudora and Pegasus Mail. Popular mail clients are Qualcomm Eudora and Claris Emailer. You can also use the mail client that came with your Web browser if you wish to. If your ISP has provided you with an older mail client or hasn't given you one at all, you can download the latest versions from the Internet.

Understanding e-mail

Your e-mail address is usually your username, followed by an @, followed by the domain name of the Internet Service provider you are connecting through. If your name is John Doe, and your dial-in name is johnd, and you are connecting through Fake ISP Inc, whose domain name is fake.com.au, your e-mail address will be johnd@fake.com.au.

Fake is the ISP name, com is the abbreviation for company and au is the country code (in this case Australia). If you left out the .au then the e-mail might be delivered to someone in America if there is a fake.com domain there (as America rarely uses its .us country code). If instead of .au you put .uk then the e-mail would be sent to England.

Sending and receiving e-mail

To send and receive e-mail you will need to start your e-mail program on your computer. All of the e-mail shareware programs come with basic help files to get you started. You will have to ask your ISP for some of the variables such as your POP account and mail (SMTP) server if you weren't given this information when you joined up. Your e-mail program takes care of everything behind the scenes once it has this information.

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and used to transfer mail from server to server across the Internet. When e-mail is sent to you, it is stored on the server until accessed by you. The address of the SMTP server is usually the domain name preceded by the word "mail". For example, mail.fake.com.au.

Your e-mail program must use Post Office Protocol (POP) or Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) to transfer the messages from the mail server to your computer. Your POP account is usually the same as your e-mail address.

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