Computers Today, December 1-15, 1998 PC User

Web mail is hot for various reasons. It is free. It is quick. It serves both personal and office needs. And scores on graphics support. To top it all, opening a mail account is a matter of minutes. However, you get none of it unless you have access to the Web.

Early this year, when Microsoft Corporation struck a $400 million-deal with US-based Indian silicon entrepreneur Sabeer Bhatia to acquire his free Web E-mail service, it raised quite a few eyebrows. It also raised the moot question: was Hotmail worth this whopper of an investment? Many failed to realise that Microsoft was not buying up the assets of Bhatia's start-up as much as betting on the concept that had made his company. Months after the deal, the concept is on the boil. Several Web sites and servers have latched on to the Internet mail wagon and throwing their wares at surfers. But why? Is it because I-mail is a free service, and therefore hot with surfers? Or is it the versatile quality of its messaging? The answer is both.

Online and Offline Post Offices

Composing mails off-line is now a lot more easier with software like Edora, Pegasus express, Microsoft Outlook and Netscape Mail. Except for the latest versions, these software can be downloaded for free from most of the Internet Mail servers. Out of these software packages, MS Outlook even supports multiple users. Some common Internet mail sites are www.hotmail.com, www.aol.com , www.usa.com , www.zdnet.com , www.rocketmail.com and www.freestamp.com. For more, www.emailaddresses.com contains a list of all the Internet mail sites currently available.

Before praising the user-friendliness of I-mail, one must know its intricacies. For starters, it is good to know that there is no bar at all on the number of mail accounts one can create: there can be one for official interactions, another for friends one dedicated to personal messages, and so on. All these, at absolutely no cost.

But understand that the concept of Internet mail is no different from the good old postal system, save of course for the postman. The server acts as a post office which receives the outgoing mail and forwards it to the address concerned. Likewise, incoming messages pile up in a mail box till they are opened by the recipient. The E-post office or the server therefore needs a good deal of memory to hold mail since the PC is not connected to the Net all the time.

It is also important to know the difference between I-mail and other E-mail services. A typical TCP/IP account may confer a login and a password to the user to link up to the local Internet service provider and surf the Net. But, remember it is only a gateway service. If the user wants a mail account too, the ISP will charge extra for maintaining the mail address and inbox. Even if the user is part of a company, remember that the company need not buy an Internet account for everybody on the rolls. The Internet account can be shared; which is not the case with a mail account service through the Web.

What about an enterprise having its own Intranet set-up? Can it not have a reliable Intranet-based mail service which would be cost effective too? Certainly, but this system becomes impractical if there is one out-of-station branch which does not really need a leased line, that too merely for mails. And what if the executives or marketing personnel are temporarily out of station or on an overseas assignment. They may not have direct connectivity to the Intranet, but the Web is always open to them as a recourse.

I-mail gives you an option that is much cheaper (free). It does not charge the user a penny more for maintaining the mail data. At the same time, it is not a charitable system either. It has another way to arrange for revenue: advertisers.

Today, Hotmail alone claims to have over 22 million subscribers in about 270 countries. With such a target audience, many companies easily agree to pay huge amounts to book advertising space on the home pages of such I-mail sites.

The Net postal systems also score on graphics support. Almost all I-mail servers work in GUI (Graphical User Interface) mode, with features like spell check and grammar correction. Messages can be sent in rich graphics format including multimedia features like sound and movie attachments. So it is not far-fetched to visualise a situation when a marketing manager sends a welcome mail to his client with his company's signature tune in the background as the message is being read.

The conventional GIAS mail , ESP or BBS-based mail have another drawback. They do not grant you an account the moment you want it. First the details have to be submitted to the service provider, and the required amount paid. It might take a few days and even weeks 'wait' for the ESP to create an account and send you a login.

The I-mail works on a different logic. A Web browser like the Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator provides the access client software. If you want to open an account, go to the Web site of such a service provider and sign up (register) by specifying the preferred login and password along with a few simple details. Lo and behold! Your new mail account address is ready. And with no pressure on the wallet.

The I-mail also serves your office needs better than the E-mail service providers. Of course, ESP offer features that help prioritise individual messages according to the degree of urgency. But ESPs work on their own protocols like the X.25 and X.400--which are reasons enough to prefer I-mail. If you are using ESP, you have to be sure that the recipient is also an ESP subscriber. Or else, a central gateway will have to do the job of liaising with heterogeneous environments. I-mail, in contrast, has no compatibility problems. An I-mail to an ESP recipient will be sent without much ado.

Not many know that I-mail can also duplicate the functions of a fax machine at a fraction of the cost. The bills show the difference, especially when the communication is cross continent. On the Internet E-to-Fax alternative, the message can initially be sent as an I-mail along with the destination fax number in place of the address. The mail is forwarded to any local I-mail server, from where it is faxed to the recipient. If you are looking for a bonus, this mode is as fast as normal fax. Not only that. It gives a better output at the recipient's end because all the way from the sender to the recipient's local I-mail server it travels virtually undistorted (digitally). Only the last short distance from server to the fax machine is analog.

The 'white pages' of most I-mail servers help identify and trace people or companies which you know by name but not location. The I-mail server maintains a database of all its subscribers along with the other details (official name, address). This database can be queried upon request by another subscriber to track down someone by the name. But if you prefer secrecy and don't want your details be offered to anybody else, the system takes care of that too. At the time of signing up for the service--after the details have been filled in--the system gives subscribers the choice of keeping their identity confidential or not.

Official documents and confidential data require protection. Here again, one has to understand two aspects of security. The need to prevent message from being tapped enroute (security of transmission) and the safe storage of mail (security of the mailbox). The I-mail is a safe bet on this count. It is less prone to leakage than other modes; the main reason being that it relies on TCP/IP suite of protocols for transmission. TCP/IP, as many would vouch, is a time-tested and secure protocol over the Net. Moreover,

I-mail has its own acknowledgement system maintained by 'mail daemon' on each such server. It keeps track of all the sent mails and intimates you whether the mail had reached the destination or not. It even messages you back in case the destination address was not found or if the destination server was down. So you are never under the illusion that you have sent the mail when actually it never reached the destination.

But I-mail is no divine mechanism without any warts. Like any other security system it is prone to loopholes and other threats from hackers. Owing to network traffic and storage space requirement, a big I-mail service like Hotmail, having millions of accounts, does not depend on a single server for mail storage and retrieval. It is actually a network of mail servers. The security and integrity of this network is maintained by a central server that keeps track of network traffic and registration of new IDs. But that does not mean GIAS or BBS are more secure.

The only low points of this otherwise flawless service are: one, the user will have to bear with the series of advertisements that are shown each time one logs in and accesses the mail; two, since this is an obligatory service, the mail server is not responsible for any data loss or corruption. But for millions of users who swear by Web-based free E-mail, the disadvantages are niggling. Small wonder that the I-mail concept has had a rocketing graph since the first day. Conventional mailing services are already fighting a losing battle. In the times to come, I-mail might just erase them.