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My very first email provider was Yahoo. At the time (2001, I think), Yahoo still has free pop forwarding which I gladly availed of because I found it's more economical to download mails in Outlook Express first, disconnect my expensive dial-up connection, then read and reply to emails later. Once I finish, I go on-line again to send everything.

When Yahoo suddenly decided that pop emails can only be availed of by premium users, I had to look for other alternatives and found Hotpop. This one was good enough for pop forwarding but you can't access and read the emails on the web. You really have to download each to OE first. And it is very prone to so many junk mails because the filters are weak.

When I finally found a cheaper Internet provider, I switched back to Yahoo although the time spent on-line still ate up a lot of my Internet fees.

So it was with great relief when I found that Blogger users can sign up for a free Gmail account which, at the time, was still in Beta mode and was by invitation only. I was so happy that Gmail not only has a big storage capacity, it has free pop downloading! Too, the folder type arrangement of emails made it very easy to organize messages.

Fast forward to this year when I finally have a DSL connection and fixed monthly fees, I still have my Yahoo account which I maintain for features like Yahoo Messenger and my numerous e-groups. It's also nice to be able to unwind and play games at their website once in a while. I just don't use the mail features much anymore except for receiving notifications from old sites I'm a member of.

Gmail, on the other hand, has remained my main email provider since 2004. I have three accounts there: one for work emails, one for personal messages and another as a "joint" account for myself and my husband which we use for communicating with relatives and common friends.

My husband and two younger kids also have their own personal Gmail accounts. Only my eldest son who's 15 has Yahoo as his main email provider due mainly to the YM feature which he uses extensively for chatting with his friends.

With Gmail, I can access other applications like Blogger and Adsense. The chat feature is a little inconvenient though because I can't suddenly sign out of an account and log into another when I am chatting with someone. But that is a minor issue with me. After all, I have YM which is still good for instant messaging because it's a separate entity from the mails.

One major thing though that made me stick with Gmail is the security feature. I have had several friends already whose Yahoo accounts had been hacked. Two of them even had the hacker sending "distress" emails to all the contacts in the list and asking them to send money to a certain place via Western Union because my friends were supposedly stranded and have no way of getting back. So I am very, very careful when opening any kind of mail with attachments or links that appear suspicious or which came from senders I don't know.

Anyway, as I've said, both Gmail and Yahoo each have their advantages. Overall, I just prefer Gmail because it is more user-friendly.

Learn more about this author, Ruth Floresca.
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