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Edited on Thu Apr-24-08 10:54 PM by RoyGBiv
I don't claim there is a "right" answer to this, but I have an opposite opinion on what kind of service to use as an e-mail provider.
Simply stated, I'd suggest you use a service like Yahoo or GMail. I personally use GMail, for a number of reasons, high among them the fact that you can use the service as a bona fide POP e-mail provider and avoid advertisements altogether, which is usually the complaint with services like these. It also has a lot of functionality that most ISPs don't have. It's no accident that the big Internet providers are offering web based front-end for their e-mail. They got the idea from providers like Yahoo who had been doing it for years and were seeing exponential increases in users.
But, the real reason I recommend this is not the GMail/Yahoo/Whatever service itself. It's the idea of having a static e-mail address that is not attached to the company you use for your Internet service. As you're no doubt about to find out, if you're not already aware, changing your e-mail address can be a pain in the ass. ISPs rely on this fact as the reasoning behind offering e-mail services. In reality, e-mail consume huge resources that could be, all else being equal, more profitably spent in other areas such as infrastructure development. All else is not equal, however. An e-mail address is a "sticky" service. It doesn't really matter to the vast majority of Internet users what their IP is at any given time, so they can change providers on a whim if they really want to, but then they have to think about that danged ol' e-mail address and the crap they're going to have to go through to change it.
In short, it is better for you as a consumer not to attach something you would probably like to remain the same for an extended period of time to the same company you use to provide you with Internet access at all. Lots of things can happen. You may lose your job and not be able to afford Internet for awhile, but it sure would be handy to still have that e-mail address so you could go down to the library and use it as a contact for your job search.
I have a friend who *still* has a basic AOL subscription *only* because he started a website back in the 90s that is now extremely popular in the academic universe. He not only has his e-mail address tied to it but also has the whole site built around his AOL address. He could actually change it, of course, but it would be a ton of work to get all the links updated and all his contacts properly notified. It's a non-profit deal, so he doesn't have the kinds of resources necessary to make that kind of transition much easier.
I use the e-mail address my ISP provides as a SPAM bucket. My ISP is nice enough to delete everything in it every 90 days if I don't check it, which is cool since I never have anything sent there I'd want. I use GMail for the "real" e-mail, which has the best SPAM filters in an e-mail provider I've come across. I've changed ISPs (and cities) recently, and the transition was far less painful with regard to communication via e-mail because of my not tying myself to my ISP's address.
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