This note from Mike Sanders got tied up in FreeLists over Christmas ... Further to the recent discussions about Betty's 'slow computer' and Ron's comments about the benefits of using a Web based e-mail service. I have recently moved my e-mail activities from BT Yahoo to Googlemail and am only sorry that I discovered Web E-Mail so late in my career. I have web storage space for over 7GB of e-mails and the service is absolutely free! I do not have to worry about backing up my important e-mails, because Google does this for me. Since changing to Googlemail I have realised one other great advantage and that is that if I want to change my ISP, my Googlemail E-Mail address will remain unchanged. I have also been led to believe that Google's Spam filtering is second to none. I think that with the possible exception of AOL as an ISP, everyone else could use a Googlemail e-mail account alongside their existing e-mail. I hope this is of some interest. Christmas Greetings to one and all. Mike Sanders 2008/12/17 Ron & Rosemary M - U3A <ronandrosemary62-u3a@xxxxxxxxxxx> > Hello > > Following Mike's discussion about Betty's slow computer I thought you > may be interested in my experience of Microsoft Outlook. Having used > this for my > email for many years I too found that having deleted all my incoming > mail the files were still taking up a large percentage of at that time > a rather small hard drive. Firstly I cleared out the in-box, no > improvement. Then the > outbox and to my surprise this contained a huge number of emails I had sent > and never thought of deleting. Again this made no improvement. > Eventually as > Mike said I twigged that they were not actually deleted but placed in > the trash can. Clearing this out released no end of disk space and > make quite an > improvement. From then on I decided to use an Internet based email > browser rather than load them down onto my PC. As I was using BT > Broadband I used BT-Yahoo that comes with the package. I think most > Internet providers have something similar. BT-Yahoo has improved over > the years and and is now much > like Microsoft Outlook but with the advantage that none of my everyday email > ever gets saved onto my hard drive and I can pick up my mail on any PC > linked to the Internet. I use a number of alias email addresses that > get filtered off into folders such as U3A, Family and Friends, > Shopping and best > of all one for Aylesbury Freecycle. On writing I have just deleted > 1394 email from the Aylesbury Freecycle folder and then from the trash > can. The shopping folder has no end from Tesco, Argos, Amazon and even > Delia on-line > and if I want, these can be sent into electronic oblivion at a single click > with hardly a thought, leaving me to savour my personal email at leisure. > One small word of warning, BT-Yahoo do not seem to have a limit on the > volume of mail I keep (at least I haven't found it yet) but Virgin > Media for > example have rather a low tolerance. If you fill up your Virgin mail > the whole thing comes to a grinding halt that will not even allow you > to delete > the excess mail yourself. Then you have to speak to the very nice man > in Bangladesh who you haven't a hope of understanding. > > Best wishes to all for Chrstmas, Ron M :-) >