E-mail – the advantages

1. Very quick – it’s almost instantaneous. If both users are online and the e-mail service (hotmail, yahoomail, webmail etc) has mail alerting enabled, messages can be exchanged as quick as they can type. • Easy to use – E-mail is very intuitive, once you have used e-mail for a few minutes most users can cope with sending, receiving and attaching. • Cheap – Most e-mail providers do not charge any extra fees, the only costs are the payment to the ISP. That is not an actual cost of e-mail, just the cost you are charged to access the internet. • You can send messages to many people at once – there is no upper limit of numbers of messages you can send at once, you can e-mail the entire address book at once if you wish. • You can use mailing lists for groups of people you often send to – usually for businesses, but anyone can set up a list. I have e-mail lists for each year group and my football buddies. E-mail – the advantages

2. 1. Impersonal – There’s no emotion with an e-mail. You can’t hear my voice or see my expression. • I can however do things like, CAPITALIZE and use BOLD when I want to make a more forceful point, I can add Emoticons etc, to add emphasis. • 2. Can be very direct (short) and appear rude – some people do not use e-mail in a very direct way, it’s easy to start with Dear….., and finish with Thanks etc but some don’t. • 3. Can be intercepted by hackers – E-mail is susceptible to being intercepted and changed or used fraudulently. While this is “technically” possible it is actually pretty rare. (THIS DOESN’T MEAN IT DOES NOT HAPPEN) • 4. You can get loads of e-mails which are not actually relevant to you – spam is a problem, sometimes the only option is to change your e-mail account! • 5. E-mails can carry viruses – Viruses are a major problem with the internet, EVERY individual user should have Anti Virus software which is kept up to date at ALL TIMES. E-mail – the disadvantages