Are the days of free web based e-mail about to end?

Alan S

Alan S

Well-known member
1000+ Posts
Joined
Mar 4, 2001
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Location
Queensland, Australia
I've had an alternate e-mail address for a few years with start.com.au
Whilst it's been a handy stand by, it's also been a pain with the amount of garbage ads & offers but something we all learn to live with. :rolleyes:
It's best attribute has been that it's always made noises as though it would remain inperpetuity but alas no; today they have posted that they shut up shop this coming Sunday. How long before the rest of them go I wonder? question

Alan S
 
Alan,
My guess is that banner ads are proving to be inefective and you will see this form of free email disappear. Hotmail is probably the most stable and reliable of the free accounts available.

Do you have a POP3 account with your ISP, most offer at least one email account and it's not uncommon to get more. Your paying for your connection so why not utilise all on offer, no pesksy banner ads to contend with. I think you'll find that the free email accounts on-sell the address which is why you would be inundated with junk mail, also exposing you to virus attacks.

Cheers
Chris
 
A person in the uk on <a href="http://www.renault19.com" target="_blank">www.renault19.com</a> said something about hotmail starting to charge for its use but im not sure if this is correct?
 
Aha! At last I topic I can talk about with some knowledge and not involve cars! (who said that I knew anything about cars anyway?)

Some of you may know I work in IT with TAFE NSW. Our teachers have been getting students to use Hotmail for a few years when teaching them email (a bit like teaching fish to swim) and they are now finding that email with Hotmail is not so hot. We have had verified reports of four to five days delays with emails being delivered or received.

I use yahoomail (stop groaning Alan) and I never have delivery probs. Yes, Yahoo flashes up ads etc but nothing is free.

Another alternative you may wish to know about is mail2web.com This is not a free email service, but allows you to get your email from your standard account (eg bigpond) from anywhere you can get web browser access. For those with more time and money, you can even use your WAP enabled mobile or PDA!

My deux centimes.

CK
 
"Another alternative you may wish to know about is mail2web.com This is not a free email service, but allows you to get your email from your standard account (eg bigpond) from anywhere you can get web browser access. For those with more time and money, you can even use your WAP enabled mobile or PDA!"

Which in English means??????

C'mon Mr K... You work in IT, I'm flat out working in an iron Lung eek! :p .....
Or in the words of a former Aussie heroin now villian ..... "Pleez explayn"
blush and my knowledge of computers is such that WAP to me is someone of ethnic European origin :rolleyes: :eek:

Alan S

<small>[ 29 May 2002, 09:51 AM: Message edited by: Alan S ]</small>
 
Alan S:
"Another alternative you may wish to know about is mail2web.com This is not a free email service, but allows you to get your email from your standard account (eg bigpond) from anywhere you can get web browser access. For those with more time and money, you can even use your WAP enabled mobile or PDA!"

Which in English means??????

C'mon Mr K... You work in IT, I'm flat out working in an iron Lung eek! :p .....
Or in the words of a former Aussie heroin now villian ..... "Pleez explayn"
blush and my knowledge of computers is such that WAP to me is someone of ethnic European origin :rolleyes: :eek:

Alan S
Click to expand...
OK - quick and nasty expl.

With your browser (eg internet explorer) type in <a href="http://www.mail2web.com" target="_blank">www.mail2web.com</a> and hit enter. this will take you to their page. Put in your email address that you would use for your normal email (probably also works with yahoo and hotmail etc) AND your password for that account. So you may put in

alans@bigpond.com

and

thisismypassword

click CHECK MAIL and wait.

You would basically get your mailbox from your ISP (internet service provider) and you can send and receive etc. this is also a great way to check if there are any monster size emails to delete rather than having to download crap to your home PC.

I use this service from work and while I am on hols via internet cafes etc and have never had a problem.

Now to really get you confused, if you use yahoomail you can also set it up to check other accounts such as bigpond etc. But that is a whole other course and I can hear Al's brain sizzling already!!! :D

Just give it a go if you want.

:p
 
Hi guys,

you could try <a href="http://www.hotpop.com" target="_blank">http://www.hotpop.com</a> This is a POP based mail account. I've been using it for the last two weeks. The only problem I've noted is it can take 8-12hours for messages to be actualy sent (ie come back to me through the yahoogroups network). Usualy this takes less than 5minutes!

seeya,
Shane L.
 
Alan S:
When did you say you were next due to visit your family????? :D :D clown blush :D :D

Alan S
Click to expand...
This doubt from the same person who would pull apart a CX armed with nothing more than a blunt nail file and a daggy old hammer. Hmmm....

Anyway, Easter next year I'll be up seeing the OF.

CK
 
Why not use aussie frogs! Their is a web mail front end that can or is enabled, we (dcsi) :) are hosting for free and don't mind say 100 email addresses or so
:D :D :D
 
Craig,

With regards to your mail2web site, I remember when we had problems with our computers, and of course instead of making things worse we'd give it a quick format and reinstall of windows, and after a while losing all your POP e-mails, or having to save them all and extract them back to outlook became a bit of a bother, so we asked our ISP if we could get our messages at anytime.
They said that once you receive your e-mails off the server, they are yours to keep.

I'm just wondering how the mail2web system would work, if the e-mails weren't located on a server?

Otherwise, that looks good :D

Adrian
 
Adrian

Ah, therein lies the weakness behind mail2web. it only looks at what is still on the server, so you can't access stuff you have already downloaded.

Still, I find it useful for what I use it for.

Yahoomail has not let me down yet as an alternate email provider.

CK
 
Craig,

You can always do what I do which is set Outlook (or Eudora or Netscape Mail or whatever program people use) to leave the mail on the server for 5 or 10 days.

It works well for me :) I've got it set at 5 days which usually leaves about 20-30 messages on the server at any one time, which you can check with mail2web or any other web based mail system like <a href="http://www.thatweb.com" target="_blank">www.thatweb.com</a> or ISP-based mail.

You do it in Outlook by going Tools Accounts, selecting the account you want to set, choose the Advanced tab and tick the boxes 'leave on server' and 'for xx days'

Also, for people who use Telstra Bigpond, if you sign up for Telstra.com with your Bigpond account details you can access your mail through Telstra.com WebMail.

Derek.
 
Just to reinforce something already alluded to

If you have a telstra.com email account and a telstra mobile phone, you can use WAP to check your emails. Only done it once (just to see if it worked) and got charged 5about $1.00 for over 5 minutes connected. Not bad, certainly less than regular phone calls from a mobile!!

I wouldn't be doing this unless I absolutely couldn't wait to check my email - that'll be the day :D
 
See Al

You've only got to ask the question and you'll get enough info back to have you absolutely stumped for about three months! What a great group of people we are.

Thanks for the idea re leaving stuff on the server. Had forgotten about that one.

:)
 
ANYBODY ELSE HEARD ABOUT THIS????

A friend of mine who works in the media forwarded this on to me.
Could this perhaps be the reason for all of these free e-mail providers going bumsup??

WHAT THE.?

> > > To All Australian Email Users.
> > >
> > > Dear Internet Subscriber:
> > >
> > > Please read the following carefully if you intend to stay online and continue using email: The last few months have revealed an alarming trend by Telstra attempting to quietly push through Commonwealth legislation that will affect your use of the Internet.
> > >Under proposed legislation Australia Post, in co-operation with Telstra, will be attempting to bill email users an "email delivery surcharge contribution". Australia Post have initiated the proposed surcharge due to a dramatic decrease in 'snail-mail' postage since the advent of email. They intend to share the 'surcharge' with Telstra, who will be the monitoring authority. Bill AS2917 will permit Telstra to charge a 1.5 cent surcharge on every email delivered, by monitoring Internet Service Providers at source. The consumer would then be billed via their normal Telstra or Optus monthly bill.
NOTE - This only applies to the sender, not the receiver. It is the sender of the email who will be billed.
Sydney lawyer Richard Stepp is working without fee to prevent this legislation from becoming law.
Australia Post is claiming that lost revenue due to the proliferation of email is costing them nearly $10,000,000 in revenue per year. You may have noticed their recent ad campaign in certain cities "There is nothing like a hand written letter".
Since the average user received approximately 10 emails per day in 2001, the cost to the typical individual would be an additional 15 cents per day, or over $54.00 per year, above and beyond their regular Internet costs. At the time of this post it is estimated that there are over 5.5 million email accounts in Australia. This equates to nearly $300 million per year to be shared between Aust Post and Telstra. Note that this would be money paid directly to Australia Post for a service they do not even provide.
If Aust. Post is successful in this, it will mark the end of the "free" Internet. Note that most of the major newspapers have ignored the story, the only exception being the Weekend Australian which called the idea of email surcharge "a useful concept who's time has come". Don't sit by and watch your freedoms erode away! This is in the proposal stage currently.
The Commonwealth warms to the idea as part of its "user pays" philosophy.
Send this email to all Australians on your list and tell your friends and relatives to write to their local Member and say "No!" to Bill AS2917.
> > >
> > > Kathy Trim
> > > Assistant to Richard Stepp
> > >Berger, Stepp and Gorman
> > > Attorneys at Law
> > > 216 Concorde Street,
> > > Epping. NSW.
> >
> >
> >
> > ------- End of forwarded message -------
 
Sorry to be the one to break it to you Alan, but that's an old, old hoax :p
 
Hi,

well I work for a company that writes computer programs, and I've never heard of this, and no-one here has either. If I was sent a bill from Telstra for my 'free' email address usage, where do you think they'd be told to go cram there fee eek! eek! eek! eek!

Really I think this is very unworkable, how are they going to track any email addresses, especialy when most of the 'free' addresses aren't even Australian based. They certainly couldn't scan every bit a data being sent through the internet.

Is this bogus or for real??

seeya.
Shane L.
 
rek:
Sorry to be the one to break it to you Alan, but that's an old, old hoax :p
Click to expand...
Fair enough, but this is why I've asked the question. Knowing our Governments as we do, it could quite as easily be for real as I understand that we are one of the few countries in the World that charges for text messages on mobiles.
We also are the only country in the World that has a tax on cattle affectionately known as a "fart tax" becuase that is basically what it is.
The cockeys reckoned they all wanted to be there when a public servant did an audit on that one eek! :rolleyes: :eek: wink blush

Alan S
 
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