E-mail (Electronic Mail) When you send a written message to someone over the Internet using e-mail, the receiver's host computer will hold onto the message until the mail recipient logs on and requests his mail.

• E-mail is cheap, fast, and global.
• It is easier to write than with paper, less formal.
• It is always filed electronically on your computer (unless you delete it), so that you can always go back to it for reference.
• It is ecologically sensible, as there is no paper waste.
• Many studies have shown that recipients are much more likely to respond to E-mail than with a written letter or memo, because the response by E-mail is easier to compose and send.
• It is printable, reliable and versatile -  you can send images, programs, sounds, documents, etc. along with your message

• E-mail can easily be misdirected.
• There can be eavesdropping, forgeries, etc.  The sender is not authenticated.
• Recipients can be overloaded with the flood of E-mail, junk mail, spamming.
• If a user does not pick up his mail, there may be no response.
• It is not as personal as a letter.

E-mail addresses use the same domain names as the World Wide Web but will begin with a user identifier.  The E-mail address consists of:

• user ID of the person who will receive the mail
• "@ " symbol
• host name (domain identifier)

Users can choose their own name, or perhaps their organization will assign them one.
 

Address Books
The best way to keep track of your E-mail addresses is to keep an Address Book.   You will find a tool to manage your Address Book in the Netscape Mail program.  As well as storing individual E-mail addresses, you can create Group Mailing Lists which will let you send the same E-mail to everyone in the group, just by selecting the group instead of an individual.
 

Undelivered Mail
If an E-mail message cannot be delivered, it will be sent back to you in your In-Box.  It may be returned because the service provider's computer is off-line, or the E-mail address is wrong, or the address no longer exists.

The returned mail will be accompanied by a message from a daemon to say that the mail could not be delivered.  It may take up to a day for the undelivered mail to be returned to you.  A "Daemon", pronounced "day-mon", has no relation to any evil creature.  It is a program that runs in the background of the Internet, serving our needs.

E-mail terms:
POP - Post Office Protocol (handles your incoming mail, needs your E-mail address)
SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (to send your e-mail)
 

The business of getting and receiving E-mail!
POP Incoming Mail		E-mail Program on your Computer		SMTP Outgoing Mail

Which E-mail program should you use?

Some popular E-mail programs are Netscape Messenger, Microsoft Outlook Express, Pegasus and Eudora.  The choice is really a personal one for you.

Netscape Navigator has a built-in E-mail feature which offers advantages over using a separate mail-handling program such as Pegasus or Eudora.

• It includes MIME which integrates multimedia features into the E-mail message.
• It can handle Internet hyperlinks within the mail so that if you type a Web address within your E-mail, it automatically recognizes this as a Web address and makes it linkable.
• When you receive this mail, you can click on the address and go directly to that Web Page.
• If you attach files which contain HTML or pictures, the recipient can see the graphic result in the E-mail window automatically from the Mail program.

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The bird illustrations, adapted by me for use here, are from the IBM DOS User's Guide, 1983
The flying bird, animated by me, uses drawings supplied in Future Splash Animator
Copyright on text and layouts (C) 1997, 1999  Margaret Brown