Free web-based email services let everybody have their personal email account that can be accessed form any computer connected to the internet.

1. Gmail
Gmail is the Google approach to email. Practically unlimited free online storage that grows with your use allows you to collect all your messages, and Gmail's simple but very smart interface lets you find them precisely and see them in context without effort. Unfortunately, Gmail does not offer IMAP, only POP access. Gmail also puts contextual advertising next to the emails you read.

2. Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! Mail is a comfortable, reliable and secure email service with a reasonable amount of storage. Yahoo! Mail, currently the Net's most popular free Web-based E-mail service, offers a powerful package that includes such nifty features as spam filtering and password protection for outgoing E-mails. The Norton AntiVirus feature automatically scans incoming E-mail attachments.

3. MSN Hotmail
MSN Hotmail comes with solid security features and a straight forward, easy to use yet quite powerful interface. Owned by Microsoft, Hotmail is the Net's second largest free Web-based E-mail provider, with over 170 million users. Hotmail offers mail filtering that allows you to direct mail into folders and also features a spell checker and a signature option, as well as the ability to customize the layout. You can add up to 20 recipients per message, as well as send attachments of up to 10 megs. Hotmail now offers 250 megs of storage space to users in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Signing up for Hotmail's free service is confusing and cumbersome these days. You must deal with strong pitches for Hotmail's commercial, for-pay service, as well as page after page of ads that pester you to sign up for various mailing lists.

4. FastMail Free Guest Account
FastMail is a great free email service with IMAP access, useful features, one of the best web-based email interfaces and few ads. Its, fast, free, provides 10 MB Space, 40 GB Bandwidth a month, No Pop-Up ads, with customizable interface.

5. ShinyFeet
ShinyFeet not only gives you unlimited space for all your emails for free, you also get a rich web-based interface and a highly capable spam filter. Unfortunately, ShinyFeet lacks a bit in email management features, does not offer IMAP access and its interface is a bit complicated and nervous with ads updating too often.

6. AIM Mail
AIM Mail, AOL's free web-based email service, shines with 2 GB of online storage, very good spam protection and a rich, easy to use interface. Unfortunately, AIM Mail lacks a bit in productivity (no labels, smart folders and message threading), but makes up for some of that with very functional IMAP access.

7. My Way Mail
My Way Mail is a clean, fast and fun (though not particularly advanced) free email service.

8. Care2 E-mail
Get a solid Web-based email account and donate to environmental organizations, both for free with Care2 E-mail.

9. Mail.com
Mail.com is great for its domain names (use them with forwarding!), but it is missing some of the security, convenience and storage of other web-based email services.

10. Lycos Mail
Lycos seems to have been caught off guard by Gmail and the incredibly expanding free Web-mail in-box. Lycos Mail is a competent but limited service, with only 5MB of free storage and no virus scanning. The interface sorely needs an overhaul. It uses the standard Web-mail layout, with folders on the left and a fully sortable in-box on the right, but a large animated ad above the in-box consumes more than one-third of the screen. Its tools are hard to find, too. The Compose and Options buttons are tucked away beneath the list of folders; they're so far down, you may have to scroll to see them. Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail put these tools above the in-box, where they belong.