Which free email account for low band with?

[Lynx]

Yahoo email now has a filter that will not let you access your account if your bandwith is to low. There adds do not come up. I cannot get on sometimes because of this. I need a new free email account  that does not use much bandwith and I do not need to download stuff into my computer to use.

Any suggestions?

[Captain Smollett]

Does your Internet provider not provide you with an account?  If so, why not use that one?

That's the problem with most "free" accounts...they have to pay for the service somehow, and the way they do it is advertising.  An email account with your ISP is already paid for, so they don't need to plaster your email with ads.

Also, if you have a web site (free host or otherwise), the host of your web site might provide 'free' email service that you are not using.  The nice thing about this route is that you can 'brand' your email to your web site name.

[Auspicious]

I agree with John.

That said, Gmail (free) has a light-weight, HTML-only access site that works nicely. If you are willing to download Adblock Plus (free) you can cut the bandwidth even more since ABP avoids downloading even the lightweight text ads in Gmail.

[Godot]

Gmail will also allow you to use a POP or IMAP client.  (I use Thunderbird, but Outlook, Outlook Express, and doubtless others will probably work, too).  Yahoo will let you do POP, too, but I think they require you to update to the $19.95/year Mail Plus program.

[AdriftAtSea]

Of course, you can use a POP or IMAP client to access Gmail and not see any ads, as Godot has pointed out.  You do have to enable the feature via the web interface, but that's pretty simple and a one-time thing.  

Yahoo does not allow POP or IMAP access to their free accounts and either does Hotmail IIRC.  

The problem with using an ISP-based account, is if you cancel your service, you lose the e-mail address.  If you're out cruising, chances are slim that you'd have an ISP... :D

If you're going to be out sailing and cruising and using SSB or HAM to check the e-mail, you may have to use an account from the e-mail service, like Sailmail.

[Godot]

Oh, some choices regarding POP and IMAP...

Both let you download to your local system to read at your leisure, thereby saving some of the pain of using the web clients.  However, it is possible (and likely, even) that you will end up downloading a lot of spam; so it is usually possible to just download the Headers, after which you can decide which email bodies you actually want to pull down.  Or setup gmail rules to move email into special folders (based on any number of criteria, for instance, by trusted person or domain), and only fully sync up the email in those folders.  This will really save some bandwidth.

If you use multiple clients, IMAP has the advantage of leaving everything on the server (you can still sync it locally as well).  POP, as usually configured, pulls the emails and then deletes them off the server (you can configure POP emails to remain on the server; but that probably means you will redownload them each time you connect).  POP seems faster.  But that means you are realistically restricted to one computer for email, and if that system dies (or gets dropped in the drink, stolen, etc), you have lost all your mail.  IMAP is more flexible.

I, personally, use IMAP on both my private domain's email server (which I am slowly retiring), and on Gmail.  I also use Thunderbird which is a decent (and free) email client.

I think for the bandwidth impaired, reading your email with an email client as opposed to the web client is a significant advantage.  I am not bandwidth impaired, and I still prefer it.

[AdriftAtSea]

Another major advantage of using an e-mail client is the ability to write all your replies off-line and then send them all at once.  This can be a lot less expensive than having a web-mail client running the whole time.

[Lynx]

Thanks for the replies. I could not find any work in the states that paid anything so I took a Job overseas. I am not using my computer. I use different computers almost everytime. 

It looks like I will have to pay for the account to get access, If I pay for the Yahoo account would it be the same thing?

I will send Yahoo an email to see.

[Lynx]

I just check Yahoo email Blog and found that people who had an outdated version of Skype was having email login problems. The same one that I was having and a lot of people are using Skype on the computers. Inorder to solver the "Error 999" problem just get the newest version of Skype of you have it on your computer.

I hope it stays fixed.

[newt]

Its good to hear from you Lynx. I was afraid you had gone the way of Pixie Dust...

[Lynx]

I just had to go to work. Need to pay the bills and get some reserves. After that who knows.