Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Outlook. Kmail is one of many applications that are part of the KDE
desktopenvironment,andincombinationwiththemprovidesemail,calendaring
and instant messaging. There are also some purely command line mail clients
such as pine and mutt . There are occasions when a non-graphical environment
isrequired,butusuallyitismuchpreferabletouseoneofthegraphicallyoriented
applications.
Ifyouarenotassociatedwithanorganizationwiththeabilitytoprovidemail
service, or even if you want to keep mail distinct from mail at your place of
employment, you can use web-based mail facilities such as MSN Hotmail ,
Yahoo! Mail , or Google Gmail , and others. These services are ad-supported
andfree,withperhapsadditionalpremiumservices.Theytypicallyprovidesev-
eral gigabytes of mail storage, which is adequate for most users.
MSN Hotmail iscurrentlybeingrenamedas Windows Live Hotmail .Your
sign-in is called your Windows Live ID, and could be a Microsoft Passport,
MSN Hotmail or MSN Messenger account. This sign-in is valid for all those
services, as well as others such as Zune and Xbox Live. Currently 5 GB of mail
storage are available, but these limits change with time.
Yahoo! Mail is currently the free mail service with the largest user base.
There is no limit on mail storage, but individual messages including attach-
ments may be no larger than 10 MB. A Yahoo! account also provides access to
Yahoo! Messenger chat client, Yahoo! Groups for email groups and the
Flickr photo site.
Google Mail (orGmail)isamorerecententryintothefreeweb-basedemail
environment. It initially offered 1 GB of mail storage, which at the time was
more than the others, and forced them to expand their capacity; now it offers
about 3 GB for free and more for a charge. A Google log-in provides access to
a large number of Google online applications, such Google Documents ,
Google Calendar , and the Picasa picture service. Google seems like it is aim-
ing to eventually be a complete alternative to in-house applications.
As far as your research goes, there is little reason to be concerned about
which email application you use. All the mail clients and services listed above
havethefunctionsnecessarycommunicatesurveysandinterviews.Thechoice
willbemostlydeterminedbyotherfactors,suchasyourpreferencesforcertain
features and institutional or ISP (Internet Service Provider) requirements.
Most of the mail clients listed are able to display embedded formatting and
graphics in the message display. Some clients may have features that make
them useful. For example, the message inbox view in Apple Mail will highlight
all messages in a thread in color when one of them is selected. Google Mail
groups messages by subject by default.
Occasional difficulties in communicating with a participant may occur due to
other technical issues, however. For example, institutions or services may block
incoming messages from a particular address. There can be any number of rea-
sonsforsuchablock,themostcommonbeingtodowithspamrelays(unsolicited
emailmessagesoftensentinbulk)comingfromaparticularinternetaddress.To
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