Dave wrote:
On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 12:44:01 -0500, Jeff Morris
said:


I don't know why you're messing around with hotmail or yahoo. You can
get your own domain and and email hosting for $18 a year. Make up an
infinite number of email names, etc. Add a website for another $24 a year.


Actually, I have a perfectly good e-mail account with my ISP. Unfortunately
when my wife got her new computer she was in such a hurry to get e-mail set
up that she didn't want to wait for me to get the connection information
from the office to set her up with her own mailbox, so she activated the AOL
service that came with the computer and is free for a couple of months.
(Obviously, it will be cancelled as soon as the free period ends.) I did
prevail on her not to use AOL's e-mail, and set her up with a Hotmail
account so it would survive the AOL cancellation. Now she's frustrated with
the web interface. I've set her up with her own mailbox on our ISP and am
setting up Outlook Express to access that account. But until she makes the
transition there is still a need to access the Hotmail account, so I was
looking for a way to set that up in OE.

All that makes sense, but when you change ISP (or even if they change
their name) your email account changes. By owning your own domain, you
can be and and use any isp you
want. You still get to use any pop3 program, plus you can get http
access to the mail server. I make up a new "name" whenever I give out
my email - all of the random names get dumped into the same box, but I
can tell if someone gave my addy away, and I can filter them. You can
do a variety of other things, like forwarding. All for $1.50 a month.

I was particularly glad I had set this up when half the people in my
town had their email addy changed not once, but twice in a year.

The one thing of value that AOL seems to do is spam filtering - I've had
to ante up for Norton's AntiSpam, because the freebie programs,
including the one from my domain host, aren't good enough.

The only problem I have now is that I always have to name my boat "Loki"!