(MONEY Magazine) – The status address to drop these days is a virtual one--that's right, an electronic mailbox. About 35 million people worldwide are now busily corresponding by E-mail, up 25% from last year, according to the industry newsletter Ferris E-Mail Analyzer in San Francisco. So you can easily transmit words, pictures, even 500-page drafts of that future prizewinning novel from Reykjav’k to the Rio Grande. Plus, a range of new features makes electronic mail more useful than ever. This month, subscribers to on-line computer network Prodigy (800-776-3449) will be able to E-mail color photographs to computer screens of other Prodigyites in the U.S. and Canada. They'll also be able to transmit soundtracks of, say, their toddler's first words. And later this year, CompuServe (800-848-8199) subscribers can have their missives translated into French, German or Spanish with only a half-hour delay by clicking an icon (prices for this service have not yet been established).

To anchor your E-mailbox, call CompuServe, Prodigy or America Online (800-827-6364). All allow you to send and receive messages within their own systems or on the Internet, the vast global computer network. You can try them all free for one month to see which you like best; after that, the services each cost about $10 a month. The heavier the use, the more you'll pay.

Computer challenged? Stay cool. You can sign on with International Discount Telecommunications in Hackensack, N.J. (800-373-3624). IDT's seven-month-old GlobalAmerica service assigns you an E-mail address, collects your incoming messages and gets them to you within minutes the old-fashioned way-by fax. Cost: $5 a month, plus fax charges of about 3¢ a page. For $15 a month, you can send messages too. And your electronic fears will remain your little secret.

--Lesley Alderman