Re: [Amc-list] Free Email? not

[Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2007, Mark Price wrote:

> What is the best online, downloadable pop or no pop free email available?!!!
> I'm in the squeeze right now! Being forced to flip my user names and all accounts from Adelphia to Comcast because of the buy out.
>  Since I HAVE to change to something, I wonder is there actualy a good choice???!!!


rant begin;

I know this is O.T. but here's my 17 cents (inflation): you
get what you pay for. hotmail, msn, etc run CRAP mail systems,
and drown you in ads.

What *I* would do is sign up for someone reputable like
Earthlink, pay for a real domain name of your own, and pick a
decent mail client that's not Outlook Distress.

I don't know about you, but internet for me is a utility. It's
not a toy for me. In 1995 it was a frill.

If it's not a "kid toy", why use one? Free accounts used to
be tolerably OK back when they were all loss-leading (pets.com
and all that!).

Crappy tools are no bargain!

Call and ask the ISP (can't call them? don't use them!) and
ask about how they manage spam. The two general methods are:
(1) they mark your email on a scale of 1 to 10 "possible
spam" to "definitely spam" and let you choose at what level
you want to pitch in the trash.  Requires a bit of technical
expertise.  Method (2) is the ISP decides what's spam, and
that's that. Sometimes OK, but I would make sure you can have a
"whitelist", eg. any mail from "@amc-list.com" is accepted.

Choose your own damm email program. They all do the basics
these days, and Outlook Express is amongst the worst bahaved
and hard to use. Personally for Windows I'd use thunderbird.

The reason for having your own domain name (about $10/year on
top of whatever charges) is that if you later change ISPs,
you can take your email address with you! And you can often
get a domain name/5 email addresses/website package for $25/mo,
and not use those crappy picture sites that drown yo in ads.


(Why does AMC-list mail to AOL "look like" spam? Well, we send
100 messages out each containing a subject like "MANIFOLD FOR
SALE". Let's say there's two bad email addresses (customers who
quit). AOL has filters that "vote" that any email containing "FOR
SALE" may be spam! Bouncing email? (eg. bad to address)? Vote
it spam!  From the same sending site? Vote it spam! Theyt don't
know or care if it's really one of us actual people.)

end rant;

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