There is this new thing called email. Its supposed to work just dandy!
Electronic Mail or Email is one of the most frequently used services on the Internet. Email lets you send messages to another person, or even a group of people. It works in much the same way as the normal postal service, but without all that paper, and you don?t require stamps. It is also much faster and cheaper that sending either a letter or a facsimile. You can even send videos, sound and images via Email.
You will have an Email box, which works like a mail box at the Post Office, but it will be stored on the computer. You will be able to clear your mail from this mail box whenever it is convenient to you, and you will be able to send mail to other users at any time. No more waiting for the Post Office to clear and sort the mail.
Once you have downloaded your Email messages to your own computer you can disconnect from the Internet and read your mail when convenient. You are also able to write your Email messages off line and when you are ready to send the message you can then connect to the Internet.
Email Addresses
Each user?s mail box has a unique address that identifies the individual. The address will also include an address for the computer on which the mail box is kept. When you organise access to the Internet through your Internet Service Provider you will be given your personal Email address.
Your Email address provides all the information that is required for people to contact you from anywhere in the world, just like the address you would put on an envelope. Email addresses may look rather complicated, but once you are familiar with them they are really quite logical. Your Email address consists of a number of parts
eg Username @domainname.organisation.country (
[email protected])
The username is your own username or ID - this may be the name you use to logon to the Internet or you may choose something different for your Email address.
The domain name is where the computer lives, it may be your Internet Service Provider, your employer or a university etc.
The organisation indicates the type of organisation or group, for example,
com commercial organisation
edu educational institution
gov government body
Most countries, excluding the USA, use a standard country code eg nz for New Zealand, uk or the United Kingdom, de for Germany. An Australian Internet site is identified by au.
All the information after the @ relates to the computer (or domain) where the user?s account is stored and anything before the @ relates to the user.
When you put all the components together they make up a unique address for each individual user. You may see a variation to some Internet addresses as there are also digital equivalents.
Email Software
There are numerous Email programs available and most of them offer the same type of functions. They will all allow you to receive and read your incoming mail, save and print incoming mail, send new messages, reply to messages, etc. While these functions will all be available, some Email programs may be easier to use than others.
The software that you use to access the Internet should have Email facilities, which you may be able to access from the browser, or you may need to install some additional software. If you require any further information relating to Email programs we suggest that you contact your Internet Service Provider. While we are not recommending any particular Email program, we do suggest that you use the latest version of the particular software you decide to install. When making a decision about an Email program for a course it is useful to find out if there is a package recommended as then you may not have so many problems in sending attachments.
Using Email
To use your email program efficiently you will need to know how to do the following:
access your email program
open and read email messages sent to you
reply to an email message
print an email message
save an email message to a file
include text in a reply (and how to edit this text)
email to groups
attach files etc to email messages