If you are a busy business traveler or just on vacation away from your home computer or laptop and you want to check your email, you can do it practically anywhere in the world on any computer that is connected to the internet via a dial-up modem or a high speed connection. Most ISP’s supply this handy email option called WEBMAIL. Before you leave home, check with your ISP and get the webmail website address along with your email account(s) and passwords.

 

Webmail works by authenticating you to your ISP's email servers with your email account and password through an internet web browser (like Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator or Mozilla Firefox). You see and work with your email through a web browser right on your ISP's email servers instead of downloading your email onto your computer using your normal email client (like Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, Netscape Mail, Eudora, Opera or AOL). The messages you receive in your webmail’s INBOX will remain on your ISP's email server until you download them onto your main computer through your email client. NOTE: With most webmail, your messages that you have in Drafts, Sent and in the Trash bin will remain in that particular webmail view, and will not be downloaded to your main computer. If you need them, you can authenticate to your webmail while your home and retrieve them.

 

The advantage of webmail is that you can access your email messages from any computer connected to the internet with a supported web browser, so you can even leave your laptop (and your desktop…ok not funny) at home if you want.

 

Some disadvantages of webmail can be that your ISP may limit your mailbox size, so if you are gone for an extended period of time or if email attachments in your INBOX are large, your temporary email size limit on your ISP's email server may fill up. Check with your ISP on your email size limit.

 

Also, if you are on an unfamiliar computer away from home there could be viruses, spyware or even key loggers tracking your activity. Make sure the computer you use to check your webmail has up to date Microsoft fixes and patches, anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-malware utilities installed on it – you can’t be too careful.