I'm not a huge fan of free e-mail services.
That being said, these last few months I've found extreme solace in the thousand-plus Gmail accounts I registered just like everybody else when it first came out. I've had numerous problems with servers, hosting, DNS resolution, and nameservers in the last eigth months or so. First, back in July of last year, I leased a server from now-defunct I-net. They worked fine... until their service started going down for 3-day sprints while their provider "fixed their Cisco network card." Then one Sunday afternoon they tell me I'm getting a $500 severance check and I have 24 hours to clean my server... yeah, all 160 GB of it.
I managed to bargain my way until Thursday, all the while experiencing the unprofessionalism of Forrest "Gumpy" Bowman, someone my partner and I assumed was his brother, and Corey Haggard. Mike and I came to refer to them as the "Dumpster Hosts" because we had a theory that they lived in the dumpster outside their data center (due to the fact that one of their wireless connections kept going out... that was a long time ago... we were working on about an hour of sleep each, so bear with us 
).
I managed to convince my mom to loan me $150 for the setup of a new server (the check wasn't due for 30 days), and as I quickly moved my files over to that one, I became increasingly annoyed at these new hosts. They took longer than advertised to set up the box, they didn't update my kernel, and they took a month and a half to propagate reverse DNS for my IP addresses. (Sorry for the jargon kids... let's just say they sucked.) I dealt with it though, since their prices were pretty damn good.
Now that I mention it, their prices were better than great. I signed up for a special reseller account with them, where all prices were supposed to be lower if I was able to sell 3 or more servers within the first month of my service. I had them for five months... and they never reverted to the regular price, even though I had only one server the whole time. Idiots.
Speaking of idiots, my I-net check never did come. I have a few lawyers taking a look at the documentation I provided them to see what can be done legally, but frankly it doesn't look good, since almost all of our dealings were through IM conversations.
I got rid of Ezzi at the beginning of this month, just because I couldn't afford it. I picked up a temporary hosting account at DreamHost, which is where I'm at now (for the next few days anyway), and it's pretty nice. Their control panel frankly sucks, but they do support an incredible amount of features, and prices aren't terrible either. They have a three-month money-back guarantee, which I plan to take advantage of shortly (like we're talking days or a week at this point). In the meantime, DGforums.net as well as my other sites will be down. (This site is hosted on an old free account on Jake's co-worker's server, and DGforums.net may be temporarily offloaded here, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms).
Shortly, I'll be completing the building of my own server, OWNED by me, so my monthly costs will be considerably lower. It's called colocation, and basically what I do is ship my server out to the data center, where they hook it up to a very fast Internet connection (100mbps to be exact--Comcast in comparison is 6mbps), turn it on, lock it up, and let it be. I can remotely access the server to do any management tasks needed, and they'll be happy to do any OS installs or other software upgrades that require someone on location with a CD in hand for free.
Problem is, I have to have the funds to purchase the components and server parts, and getting the money back from my DreamHost account is really the only option at the moment.
ON TO THE REAL REASON I started writing this: Microsoft Exchange. MS Exchange is a a super-premium-awesome-cool piece of software for Windows servers that allows a person to read their e-mail on the web and on their PC, with everything from flagged messages to contacts to appointments completely synchronized. IMAP can do this for Linux (and is free), but Exchange is colorful (and expensive). I had a free Exchange account on a trial basis from 1&1 a while ago, but got rid of after my trial was up. It is really cool... not even kidding here.
But I digress. Mail2Web.com has a relatively new feature (new since the last time I logged into my account there back in '04) that offers a free @mail2web.com e-mail address... WITH AN EXCHANGE ACCOUNT! Not to mention it's free. Go and sign up, try it out. You can't really get the full experience with their modified logos and ad-infested Inbox, as well as if you don't use Outlook 2003 for e-mail. But it's still cool nontheless.
Fine. Stick with your precious Gmail. The average human being doesn't know their IMAP from their OWA from their POP from their Pepsi. One of these days, though...
