Gmail

Gmail.com is a free email service notably different than any other. The main differences are: storage amount, ability to search, clustered conversations, and ability to label.

1. STORAGE AMOUNT - For all intents and purposes, you have unlimited storage with gmail. At the moment I have over 2694 megabytes of free storage, and that amount increases with every passing second. The reason for this large amount of storage is to make it so that you never need to delete an email message ever again. This brings me to point number 2.

2. ABILITY TO search - When I first learned that with Gmail you never need to delete a message, I was not particularly impressed. I receive many emails that provide me with quick information, but then serve only to clutter my inbox. Gmail, however, allows you to "archive" your messages if you choose to after you read them. This, for practical purposes, makes your message disapear (although you retain the ability to see all your old archived messages if you choose). Once a message has been archived, you can use the gmail search engine (just like the google search engine) to search all your old mail by keyword. Thus, if I want to recall an old email that had a subject heading or date I cannot remember, I can simply search by keyword and easily find that old email.

3. CLUSTERED CONVERSATIONS - Anytime someone hits "reply" to an email with a given subject line, that new email gets grouped along with all other emails of that same subject. The appearance of this is similar to a message board on a website. It allows you to either see the whole conversation, or just the newest messages. This feature makes it easy to keep track of the context of your emails, and to review the content of past emails.

4. ABILITY TO LABEL - Another convenient feature for organizing your emails is the ability to apply "labels" to emails. This feature is similar to folders with other email services, but its presentation is clearer and more convenient than typical folders.

In addition to the four features above, gmail has recently added gmail chat. With gmail chat you are automatically signed on whenever you sign into your gmail account, and you can instantly chat with other gmail users. I have not really used this feature yet.

http://www.gmail.com