Messaging For The Masses E-Mail on the Web Is the Way to Go For the Harried Business Traveler
By Joel Dreyfuss

(FORTUNE Magazine) – In the beginning (of this current e-volution) was the Internet. And a day later, or so it seemed, there was e-mail. Everywhere. It was part of the deal when you signed up with an Internet service provider. But e-mail wasn't perfect; you had to configure an e-mail "client"--software that would read and send your mail--and that could be difficult.

Then came Web e-mail, a free service now offered by virtually every major Website--and at first glance, it seemed perfect. Web-based e-mail makes it possible to read and send mail from any computer with Internet access and a Web browser. Any of a dozen Internet portals offer it free. You don't have to set up any software. You don't even need to own a computer--you can log in on someone else's machine, at the library, or from an airport kiosk.

But then MSN Hotmail, Microsoft's free Webmail service, went down for hours and had some widely publicized security problems. So users are now asking, Is Web e-mail worth it? Is it safe?

I joined three major free e-mail services, MSN Hotmail, Netscape's WebMail, and Yahoo Mail. After several weeks of testing, here are my answers to those questions: Yes, it's worth it, and for the most part it's safe. All three services do what they promise for the peripatetic e-diarist. That said, Webmail can be slower than regular e-mail, and there are security issues any prudent user should consider.

The three services require you to sign up by providing your name and some contact information and by selecting a user name and password. Hotmail also asks for some personal data for the service's online directory--but you can decline, the online equivalent of keeping your phone number unlisted.

All three services provide basic e-mail functions and some useful advanced features. You can create folders to store and organize messages, and a standard signature that will be attached to all your outgoing messages.

Web-based e-mail is sent in the HTML format that's used to create Web pages. This means you can pick a colorful, even garish, background from a set of templates, and write your message in a variety of fancy (often unreadable) fonts. It works, of course, only if the recipients of your message have the ability to read HTML mail--a given if they too use a Web-based e-mail program, or a recent version of Microsoft's Outlook or Outlook Express, or Qualcomm's Eudora. However, "free" e-mail has a price: An ad for the service is tagged to each message.

Webmail services are loaded with nifty features. Hotmail lets you check its user directory to find friends and relatives. You can sign up for as many as a dozen "subscriptions" to things like news and gossip mailings from sources like CNet, MSNBC, and Wired. All three services help the well wired cope with multiple e-mail accounts by consolidating up to five of them into one in-box. You can then read and reply offline to all the messages in those accounts.

My favorite feature is the junk-mail blocker, available on each service. You can tag a message as junk, and all future missives from that sender are automatically moved to a junk folder or deleted. You can also program WebMail and Yahoo Mail to send an "I'm on vacation" notice to let people know you're truly trout-fishing and not just in a snooty mood. Both Hotmail and WebMail will send you reminders of important dates and anniversaries. WebMail even lets you select the time your message is dispatched. In the latest Windows version of Outlook Express, you can install Hotmail as a standard e-mail service. This means you can download Hotmail messages and read them offline--a great feature.

And what about security? Well, Microsoft recently added a slew of security features to Hotmail. One nice one is that Hotmail lets you delete any pages that have been downloaded to the computer during your online session. That's a valuable way to preserve privacy when you're using a shared or public machine to read e-mail. It's not needed if you're using your own PC; in that case, Web-based e-mail may indeed be just about perfect.