One of the nicest things about Internet e-mail is that it's the most self-contained of all the Internet services. Things like FTP, Gopher, and the World Wide Web require road trips on the Net's highways and byways to find what you need. With e-mail, though, you can stay "home" and send out missives to others, or have their messages delivered right to your "door." It's about as painless as the Net can get.

Still, this whole idea of sending messages back and forth in cyberspace is a mysterious business, to say the least. How are messages created and sent? How do they know where to go? How do we read the mail that comes our way? This primer is designed to remove some of the mystery from the e-mail process by giving you some basic, and oh-so-non-technical, background info.

The E-mail Primer consists of the following 8 sections:

How Does the E-Mail System Work?

The Pros and Cons of E-Mail

A Note About E-Mail Security

Message Anatomy

Can I Get There From Here? Exchanging Mail Between Systems

Minding Your E-Mail Manners

Learning the Lingo: E-Mail Jargon and Acronyms

Some Thoughts on E-mail Virus Hoaxes