E-mail accounts are available through many different sources. You may get one through
school, through your work or through your ISP. When you get an e-mail account, you will be
given a two part e-mail address, in this form: username@domain.name. The first part,
username identifies you on your network, differentiating you from all the other users on the
network. The second part, domain.name is used to identify your specific network. The
username must be unique within your network, just as the domain name must be unique
among all the other networks on the Internet. However, user names are not unique outside of
their networks; it is possible for two users on two different networks to share user names. For
example, if there is one user with the address bill@bignetwork.net, there will not be another
user on bignetwork.net whose user name is bill. However, bill@bignetwork.net and
bill@smallnetwork.net are both valid e-mail addresses that can refer to different users.
One of the first things that you will do when you are setting up your e-mail is to enter your e-
mail address into your e-mail client program. Your e-mail client is the program that you will use
to send and receive e-mails. Microsoft's Outlook Express may be the most widely known (since
it comes free with every copy of a Microsoft operating system), but there are many others
available for both Windows and Linux, including Mozilla, Eudora, Thunderbird and Pine.
