…with free POP and SMTP access in Gmail. Not only that, but it uses an encrypted version of both protocols for added security. I’ve routed all my mail (from about 5 different accounts) through my Gmail account, taking advantage of their feature that automatically archives mail once it’s been POPped. So even though I download mail to my desktop, if I’m at a different computer with Internet access I still have that pile of everything I’ve received, for reference. When I manage to fill up the whole gigabyte of online space (it’ll happen some day), I’ll delete the oldest half gig of messages because they’re just duplicates of what I’ve filed locally, anyway.

When are the other big two (Yahoo, which charges for POP access) and Hotmail (I don’t know anything about this, other than that Outlook Express can download mail from Hotmail through a proprietary protocol) going to follow suit? I don’t know, but Gmail’s still the greatest thing since butter. (To put on the sliced bread. Because you can’t just eat the sliced bread plain, you know.)