E-mail can be accessed via many different software programs.  The popular browsers of Netscape and Microsoft have email built into them.   Eudora is a free standing email program that is popular.  Use a program that you are comfortable with. Whatever program you use however, you need to configure the program so it can find and send your email at the appropriate space on the appropriate server. 

What follows are instructions based on the assumption you'll be using Netscape Communicator to read/send email. Most software requires the same sort of information and you should be able to modify these instructions to your particular software, especially if you're willing to use the Help Menu of your particular software program.

On to configuring Netscape Communicator for email.....

Configuring involves setting the preferences in Netscape Communicator. The preferences can be found under the Edit pull down menu:

• Open Netscape Communicator
• Move your cursor to the menu bar at the top of the screen
• Click on Edit.
• Click on Preferences. The various categories of preferences that can be configured appears. Clicking on the + sign next to any category expands that particular category to show all available areas for configuration.
• Changing the + to a - on Mail & Groups results in the following screen
  
  

Setting your identity

An email address is in the following form: username@servername. The user name identifies the user, and the server name identifies the server (hardware host) where the mail is stored.  To send and receive mail, you need to specify your username (the part of your email address before the @ sign) and server name (the part of your email address after the @ sign). The examples in the configuration tutorial, assumes an email address: username@servername. Configure Netscape to the particular email address where you desire to receive and send email.

Servers are pieces of hardware that store date. The mail server is the hardware that houses your email. Administrators name servers and the names don't necessary mean anything to the ordinary person.

To specify the mail server, click on Edit on the Menu Bar. Select Preferences. Select Mail & Groups. Select Mail Server.

An email address is in the following form: username@servername. The user name identifies the user, and the server name identifies the server (hardware host) where the mail is stored.