[Web4lib] Your preferred web-based e-mail site

[Abramson, Alicia]

I personally love gmail, and you can now signup without an invitation:
http://www.gmail.com

I like that it keeps conversations in a single thread instead of all
over your mailbox, the labeling and searching capabilities are nice too.
The model is different from Yahoo as you don't create folders, just
labels.  

Finally, one of the biggest selling points is that its spam filter works
much better than my Yahoo ever did.  I stopped using Yahoo because so
much spam got through, it was a chore to open the mailbox up.  Some does
occasionally sneak through in gmail, but my non-scientific guess is that
it's about 95% less!

Alicia Abramson
Manager Library Information Technology
Berkeley Public Library
aabramson at ci.berkeley.ca.us
510-981-6131

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Gillian Wiseman
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 1:30 PM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Web4lib] Your preferred web-based e-mail site

I teach library patrons how to use e-mail. I've been teaching Yahoo mail
for years, but their sign-up process is difficult - for example, finding
a username that isn't already in use is a really time-consuming process
- and wading through all the "new features" pages and the "set up your
own webpage" pages, etc... can be confusing to new users.

I'm looking for suggestions for web-based mail that would be easy to
have patrons sign up for, are reliable, and have enough similarity to
yahoo/outlook/other e-mail programs that people can transfer what they
learn when they later want to use other tools.

Most of my patrons are seniors or other new computer users who are
easily confused by complexity and obscurity as well as computer
terminology, so if there's a super simple or super basic site, that
would be my first choice.

If you want to reply to me privately, I'll report my results to the
list.

Gillian Wiseman
Electronic Resources Librarian
Waco-McLennan County Library
(254)750-5944
gwiseman at ci.waco.tx.us

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