With a free e-mail account, you can check and send e-mail from any Internet-connected computer, on any platform. Free e-mail accounts liberate you from having to use the software provided by your current Internet service provider.

• Excite, best known for its search engine Web site, now offers free e-mail services to anyone who has access to the Internet. The e-mail address assigned to you will be: yourmembername@excite.com

• Hotmail accounts are free to all users. Registration is fast and easy.

• MailCity is the free e-mail service offered by the Lycos company. If you signed up for free Web page with Tripod (another Lycos service), you already have a logon ID that you can use for MailCity.

• Yahoo!, best known for its search site, offers free email accounts.

• Netscape WebMail - In addition to offering its browser and free hosting, Netscape offers free email accounts.

• Mail.com offers free Internet accounts and free email accounts. Mail.com provides you with a 10MB box, which is the largest free box on the web! This service is great for sending and receiving large files. Mail.com also lets you use your name with a large list of domain choices like yourname@surfer.com, yourname@computerprogrammer.com, yourname@teacher.com