I feel you need two email accounts to manage your workload or net conversations effectively and productively. First of all having made an account make sure you check it regularly. No point in having a dead account. Here are some of the tips I share with you. You might know most of them already. I have learned them the hard way though.
General Tips: Choose an account that has a short name like vsnl.net, vsnl.com, yahoo.com. Everybody will curse you if you have something like @indiatimes.com or rediffmail.com. At least I will. Imagine typing that all the time. Now of course we have address books. But then too a shorter name makes for better rememberance. Try to have a same user name at all your accounts. Do not hesitate to make a compromise like going for vinay_s instead of vinayjs. As long is it is available at all sites. If it is for personal usage then you can also opt for names such as the_great_one or chromosome_x or he_man or something of that sort. If you simply can’t have it then chuck it. Never reveal your password or write it down somewhere. If you cannot remember even that you do not deserve to have email services. Never accept the Windows offer to remember your password. Your email account becomes accessible to everybody who has access to the machine. You may not be A.P.J. Abdul Kalaam but privacy is valuable nonetheless. You surely do not like anyone going through your mail err. snailmail or post mail, do you?
Specific tips: First get a POP3 compliant email service and a reliable email client. This is an absolute essential. You do not want to spend or rather waste time on the net typing messages or doing the age old cut paste method, something which we do to post our reviews on this site. My personal recommendation would be to get a VSNL email account and Outlook Express 5. This is of course supplied free in the CD given by VSNL. This combination is lightning fast. Personal experience tells me this. Incoming mail server is pop.vsnl.com and outgoing server is smtp.vsnl.com . Those who have @net addresses substitute net in place of com. Another thing you cannot have web access to this account as VSNL has scrapped web mail service. You cannot send a single mail to more than ten recipients. This is generally to avoid Spam. This is no big hazard though. Instead of sending one mail to hundred people you can send ten mails with the same content to ten different people. Keep this account exclusive. Divulge this address only to your closest friends, relatives and acquaintances, business associates; in short people who you know for a fact will not abuse or misuse your address. Ask everybody you know not to reveal your address to anybody unless they have your approval. In short there should be no junk mail in this account. Do not sign up for any offers, or any freeware products, any promotional ads, any newsletters or anything else. The advantages of this are easy to see.
You will have almost no chance of getting a virus at this account unless one of your friend’s system is infected. And even if you do then you will know whom to blame for it. Now create a second account. It can be anything a POP3 account or a web-based one. Personal preference is a POP3 one. Rediffmail is fast. It is good but it is not POP3 compliant. Go for Yahoo.com . Incoming server is pop.mail.yahoo.com and outgoing server is smtp.mail.yahoo.com . Keep this address for all the other things. Say when you sign up for letters, or freewares or sharewares and want to receive any promotional ads and all other things unimportant; give them this address. Once a week you can check your emails if you want and just run through the subjects and read only those you want and delete all the rest. Parting Tips: Learn all the salient features of your email program. Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook 2000 are currently the best. Eudora is not that bad too.
I do not have personal experience so No Comments. Learn all the advanced features and you will be amazed at how efficiently you can work with your email. You can block certain senders from sending emails in your inbox. If you block those senders, then their emails are deleted from the account without being downloaded on your PC. Also you can download just the headers of all messages and then choose which ones you want and which ones you do not. And last but the greatest never ever even dare to open an attachment from someone you do not know. Even if your friends send you an attachment and you are not aware of the extension of that attachment scan it.
DO NOT OPEN ANY FILES WITH EXTENSIONS SUCH AS .EXE, .SCR AND NO MATTER HOW FLASHY THE TITLE IS DO NOT FALL FOR IT. Remember nobody gives you nothing for free on the net. So BEWARE and watch out. A good Anti Virus like McAfee will do. Norton is the best but is too dominant on the system for me.