Chapter 18. Using Windows Live Mail

It seems that just about everyone knows what e-mail is. (The e stands for electronic.) With e-mail, you type a letter or message on your computer and send it to the recipient's e-mail address, and it ends up in the recipient's e-mail Inbox, sometimes as quickly as a few seconds later. You can attach things such as pictures and other files to the message so that the recipient gets those, too.

To use e-mail, you need an Internet connection, an e-mail address, and an e-mail client (or a Web browser for web-based e-mail). All e-mail addresses follow the format , where someone is your user name and somewhere.tld is your mail provider's domain name. The e-mail client is the program you use to send and receive e-mail. This chapter is about Windows Live Mail, the optional e-mail client that is available as a download from Microsoft's Windows Live Web site.

How E-mail Works

When you send an e-mail message to someone, it goes from your computer to an outgoing mail server (a computer) on your office network, at your ISP, or another mail provider (such as Hotmail). That server looks up where the message needs to go based on the delivery addresses and then sends the message to an incoming mail server at the other end. That incoming ...

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