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consolidated in one place. Similar features in Yahoo and Hotmail cost a yearly subscription fee.

Another consideration for the light email user is that browser-based email services deactivate and may delete messages when a period of inactivity occurs for a given amount of time. This is a measure to ensure that users log in often enough to view the ads that pay for the email provider's costs in terms of storage and bandwidth. Hotmail allows for only 2 months of inactivity; Yahoo, 4 months; and Gmail, 8 months.

Free Instant Messaging service is available with all three services, with Yahoo and MSN (Hotmail) having much larger networks than Gmail. While Gmail currently lags behind in terms of network volume, the built-in chat interface is quite impressive and will likely become even more popular as Gmail's usage rises.

Some additional complementary features are offered by each service. All three options offer search to pull out old emails from the archives if you need information from them again. All three services also come with built-in virus check. Yahoo and Hotmail allow for signatures containing rich text. Gmail comes with a free calendar that also sends email reminders for upcoming events. Gmail also offers filtering and spam protection with many more options than the competition. In addition, Google offers a handy online calendar, which you can configure to send out email reminders for upcoming events.

For the purposes of comparison, we have looked at what each company offers for free. In my opinion, Gmail is the best choice with its beautiful interface, and great storage. Gmail also offers the widest array of complementary features, many of which are echoed as paid features in Hotmail or Yahoo. And with Gmail's smaller user base (about 51 million), you are much more likely to find a cool email address that hasn't been taken by someone else.

Learn more about this author, Lime Green Sphere.
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