Email Overview

WebMail Assistant .

This program is designed to extend the capabilities of Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, and to make them faster and easier to use.

More importantly it lets you save messages and address book information on your own hard drive.

Tracks Eraser

Recover Lost Files

Email Overview

To send and receive email you will need an email client and you will need to be connected to an email network.

Email Clients

There are two popular types of email client they are:

Client/desktop based often called POP3 email
Web Based email

Client based or POP3 email

This is a dedicated email client; examples are:

Outlook express
Outlook (98,2000,2003,2007)
Incredimail
Thunderbird
and many others

One of these clients needs to be installed on the computer you are using, and needs to be correctly configured before you can send and receive email.

The term POP3 client arises because the protocol they use to receive email is usually POP3 (post Office Protocol version 3). These types of client have been around since the birth of email when they were command line based, and they are still the type that most people use.

Web Based Email Clients

These clients are simply web browsers with the work all being done on the web server. Hotmail was the first well known example and was purchased by Microsoft January 1998.

The advantage of this type of client is that no software other than a web browser needs to be installed on the user's computer. This means that access to email can be accomplished at any computer that has a web browser (almost 100% have).

Almost all email providers now provide access to email via a web based client.. The main disadvantage of this type of access is you need to be connected to the Internet in order to read/write emails.

There are three main providers of free email services that provide access primarily through a web browser. They are:

Hotmail
Yahoo Email
Google Gmail

Email Address and Email Account and Email Network Connection

In order to send and receive emails you need to connect to and email network. The mail network in our case is the Internet but it could also be an internal stand alone office email system as the technology used is the same.

In order to send and receive emails you will need an email account on the network. You can get an email account from a variety of sources and you can have many different accounts.

Network Accounts and Email Accounts

Yahoo, MSN (Microsoft) and Google provide Internet services other than email. to access the service you need to have a network id (user name) and password.

However because the initial service offered by these providers was email then the account name used to access the other services tends to be an email address or in some cases part of the email address.

In the case of MSN and Yahoo this email address is provided by them i.e. it has the form user@yahoo.com or user@hotmail.com. However in the case of Google the mail address can be from any provider.

For an example; I use many of the Google services but my primary logon id is an email address from a totally different ISP (i.e. not Google).

Email Addresses and Mailboxes

A mailbox is a location where email is stored. It is the electronic equivalent of a post office box. In order to receive email you need to have a mailbox.

When you sign up for an email account you are assigned a mailbox and normally an email address. The email address and mailbox are linked such that any email sent to the email address will be placed in the mailbox.

It is possible to link (associate) multiple email addresses to a single mailbox.

Mailbox Locations

Mailboxes need to receive email from the email network and hence need to be available to receive email. Therefore they are located on the email network (In our case this is the Internet).

If you have a Yahoo email account your mailbox will be on a Yahoo maintained email server.

Mailbox Access

To access your email you will need to connect your email client outlook express etc or your web browser to your email providers email server.

Once connected to your mailbox you can send, receive and manage your emails.

Access via desktop based client like outlook Express is very different to access using a web browser and is covered in Email Setup.

--------------------------------------------------------------------