Free Web based email has spoiled the way email was used earlier, but to each era, a memory.
Well, among free email providers, we have/had Hotmail, usa.net, mail.com, iname.com(redirector), bigfoot.com(redirector), pobox, yahoo mail, rediffmail, mailandnews.com, eng.mail.ru, fastmail, etc etc etc.there is no shortage of free web based email services. But right now, I’ll talk of just a coupld of services that work fast, offer a lot of customisation for a very small price.
Yahoo mail - Popular, fast, customisable. Has lots of spam filterning options(you don’t want to know multiple ways to get rich fast, increase the sizes of this and that:P). I’d pay the small sum of money yahoo wants to increase my mailbox size to 10-25M, increased spam filtering and no advertisements
Fastmail.fm - relatively new, has a host of domains to choose from. Has a free as well as fee based service. YOu can switch between these services. Pay a small sum, get pop/imap/smtp access. Fast, very fast(atleast faster for me than any other free mail provider.
Take your pick