Before you can send or receive emails you need to get yourself an email address, this will be a unique combination of letters and/or numbers. You can get an email address by signing up for an account with an email provider, the email address will look something like this :

yourname@provider.com

The first part before the @ symbol will be your choice of name, you will probably find that if you use a FREE email service such as Yahoo® or Hotmail®, and you don't have an unusual name then your name will be taken, if it is you will have to improvise a little, putting numbers after your name is a common way around this problem.

Some free email services include:

Google Mail

Microsoft Live

Yahoo

Once you have your email address you will need to decide how you want to send and receive emails. If  you use a FREE email service then they will send you details on how to use their Web Mail service. Web mail is basically allowing you to send/receive email from anywhere using your Internet Browser (IE, Firefox etc).

If, however you don't have access to a FREE email service then you will want an email client. The email client is software that lets you send/receive emails (Outlook Express, Thunderbird etc.). If you have a Windows PC/laptop then you will have Outlook Express pre-installed, however there are others which I will list below.

Instructions for setting up are included with the links, however I will provide downloadable copies soon.

Microsoft Outlook Express

Mozilla Thunderbird