Hi List Many thanks to Diana, Mary, Stan, Paul, and David for your helpful advice. To summarise the replies: Diana & David suggested acquiring my own domain name. I hadn't thought of that! I'm looking into the pros and cons: it doesn't look very expensive, but I need to find out how much work is involved in set-up and maintenance. Paul suggested: "Email for Life" from the Alumni Association of a university. I checked this out - not expecting much. Surprise, surprise, my old Uni. offers this too. The only problem is that registering for it will expose me to people I've been trying to avoid for years! Mary recommended Gmail & Stan gave it qualified approval. I investigated further and found that UK customers can't get an account with a 'gmail.com' suffix, we have to put up with 'googlemail.com', which is a bit clumsy. Anyway, thanks for all your help. I'll try out Gmail in the short term, whilst I investigate my own domain name - it would be a good way to share photos/files/trees with my collaborators. Regards, John ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Evans (fhml)" <fhml@ukfreeisp.co.uk> To: <computers@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 5:19 PM Subject: [COMPUTERS] A 'Permanent' Email Address for FH > Hi List, > > I'm trying to get a more-or-less permanent email address to > attach to my 'Interests' in FHS journals. So far, two of the ISPs > I used to use for dialup access have gone bust, and left me with > a lot of people to inform re address changes. Now that I have > broadband access I would like something more permanent, that > isn't tied to any one ISP. Can any list member advise: > > 1. How do Hotmail & Gmail compare? > 2. Are there any other options? > 3. I understand that I can use POP and Outlook Express with Gmail; > does that work with Hotmail too? > 4. How do I get a Gmail address? Going to www.google.co.uk, then > to the Mail tab seems to lead to being offered an address of the > type joebloggs@googlemail.com. Is there a different route to > get to joebloggs@gmail.com? > > Regards, John