How many E-mail Accounts are Needed?
February 28, 2008
I was reading Robert Scobels post on Switching to G-mail, and it made me think of all the e-mail accounts I have. Most people have an e-mail account in general that they check their e-mail on a regular basis. As well as a school e-mail address, or an e-mail address for work. I think it is easiest just to have the one e-mail address. That way you dont have to be checking so many e-mail accounts on a regular basis. But its hard not too accumulate a few e-mail addresses over the years.I first started of with an e-mail account on hotmail, but got quickly sick of the address and than graduated to a new address. Than I made an account with Yahoo and use to play games on my yahoo account in highschool, but haven’t bothered with that e-mail account in ages. As well as having my upei e-mail address, and my new g-mail address I made for viewing the feed reader for this course. It is very hard not to have a few addresses.
Its interesting how some people buy and sell e-mail addresses. Nokia N96 email address sells for $660 on ebay. Some people make a living of of this as people want the best e-mail addresses. A Nintendo Wii e-mail address sold for $385 on ebay.
I did not realize how big this market is until doing some research. I have came across web-sites that actually sell e-mail accounts to people. I think it is crazy how people actually buy e-mail accounts.I found out some different web-sites that you can create free e-mail accounts besides the typical ones such as: Hushmail, Inbox.com, and Bluebottle. I have really started to like g-mail, but I I still like Hotmail more. I find that Hotmail is very easy to use and navigate. But g-mail has more services provided when you create an e-mail account. I also really like how there is the feed reader on g-mail.
I think web-sites like Hotmail have captured a large portion of the e-mail market. A lot of companies probably find it hard to compete with Hotmail – as they have many users. But many people have numerous e-mail accounts with different web-sites.
Mitchell Watts
UPEI - BUS442.0 
February 28, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Yeah you are right, accumulating a few email addresses along the way is not unique. Everyone must have had more than one email address along the way. I used to have a few, however, as time progressed they became inactive. Now i have upei’s, hotmail, and gmail. Gmail i rarely use. When i signed up to gmail, i wanted a way my hotmail emails could be forwarded to my gmail account so that I dont have to be informing everyone of my new email adress, however couldnt find a way to do that so stuck to hotmail. My upei’s email address however forwards to hotmail so hotmail’s the only email i use. I no longer sign up for new email accounts! since i guess one address is quite enough.
February 29, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Yeah I agree with you, Mitchell. I think the idea of selling email addresses is slightly ludicrous. I can understand companies wanting to buy certain relevant email addresses (or webpage addresses for that matter) but LoveMyN96@gmail.com for $660? That’s just Bogus.
Having a couple of email addresses does become confusing, I have three currently and despise using two of them. UPEI’s email address is particularly annoying since the Inbox space is so small and frequently rejects incoming emails. And I can’t seem to get use to using gmail. Hotmail is by far my favorite, except for when it breaks down (http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/02/27/tech-hotmail-sympatico.html), which fortunately isn’t often. But personally I’d rather have electronic mail over physical mail any day. It’s simplified so many aspects of our everyday lives. Does everyone remember the dark ages before we weren’t checking our personal email daily?
February 29, 2008 at 10:33 pm
We all struggle with keeping and securing passwords for the various accounts and systems we access in daily bases. Here are some free and low-cost password storage solutions:
1- http://keepass.info/
2- http://handable.com/SafeInHand.html
And for the part where some websites email you back your passwords or use a hint to recover your password do not come with something up, use something you familiar with (i.e. cat or dog name).
Also, I highly recommend using one password for all e-mail or accounts you create make it complex by using upper case letter and add some numbers to make it more secure.
As for the e-mail account selling for $660.00 on ebay that is amazing and wish I had my hands on one e-mail address that will sell for this much.
March 1, 2008 at 12:18 pm
I also have a few email addresses too, Hotmail, UPEI and my work email. I primarly use the hotmail account, like pretty much everyone else, I agree with Mitch, it is really user friendly almost anyone could figure out how to use it. Even though it can get confusing at times, having three email accounts, I find that it just breaks up my different aspects of life. Hotmail is just a personal account, UPEI just deals with school and with the work address i can only access it thru work as it is.
I dont think i could handle having just the one account account for everything.
March 1, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I used to face problem with using several email addresses. The reason was that I used to use different password for different addresses. So sometime I had to try all of my password to log in because I could not able to remember exact password for any specific email address. At the end, I changed my password to one unique password and now I am okay with using different email accounts.
March 2, 2008 at 11:35 pm
I currently have 4 e-mail addresses. One that I’ve had since I was 14 that I have all of my msn contacts and friend contacts through. I have one for my “professional” life, because all of my profs said I should have an email that contained my name, ie. dgmckenna@hotmail.com. I soon converted my “professional” account to g-mail, so that made #3. My 4th is with the UPEI account. I agree with Tasia, I have these 4 e-mail addresses and I despise using all except my gmail account. I got it in the summer and I’m in love with it right now.