Dialup and broadband Internet connections usually come with email accounts. But what if we don't want to be tied to a provider, or need more email addresses than what we're given? What if we don't like our address names? As they say in Star Wars, there is a New Hope. Whether you're looking for free accounts or are willing to pay money for extra perks, there are hundreds of email services available. Here is a comparison of the bigger players offering free email accounts. These will be around for a very long time, require no special software, and will work with any operating system in the galaxy: Open up a web browser from almost any computer and check your email.

The four players below all have virus scanning, spam blocking, automatic vacation reply, automatic signatures, and email filtering as part of their free service. The free versions of these email accounts use ads to pay for their services.

Hotmail by Microsoft - www.hotmail.com

Hotmail is like Jabba the Hut: Love it or hate it, it's extremely popular, huge and imposing. You get 250MB of storage and an interface with a Microsoft look and feel. For an additional $10 per month, Hotmail can synchronize with your PC or handheld, so you can have mobile access to your email, calendar and contacts. Free Hotmail accounts will expire if not used every 30 days. They have conspicuous ads, and the sheer amount is distracting. Ads are also attached to the end of every email you send.

Yahoo Mail by Yahoo - mail.yahoo.com

Yahoo Mail is like Han Solo: Not the star of the show, but still important and talented. It gives you 250MB of storage. The basic free account gives you a very good address book, calendar, notepad and PC / handheld synchronization. Yahoo Mail has slightly fewer ads than Hotmail, but also attaches an ad to the end of every email.

Gmail by Google - www.gmail.com

Gmail is like Obi Wan Kenobi: Simple but powerful. You get 1000MB of storage and an uncomplicated but slick interface.  It has a unique way of accessing email much better than traditional folders. You can find and sort through messages much faster than before. Gmail ads are hardly noticed, and your sent email does not contain forced ads. Gmail is new and still in a test phase, so has no calendar, notepad, or sync software. Membership is invitation only, but do a web search for "free Gmail account", and you'll find plenty of free offers.

Mail2World - www.mail2world.com

Think R2D2: These guys are fun to look at, and are great at adaptation and having a good time while working. Choose difference colors and skins to tweak the mail tool's appearance, or (and this is the cool one) have more control over your email address choices! For example, let's say you want the email address "skywalker@mail2world.com". You find that it's already taken. No problem - just change the domain name! That is, you can change the email suffix to be something else. How about "skywalker@mail2star.com"? Sounds much better, and even fits our slightly-contrived Star Wars theme. Go here to see a listing of Mail2World's most popular domains, or to search through their 2000+ others. You'll get 250MB of storage, interface customization, multiple language support, and a nice interface with ads that aren't too annoying (and far more tolerable than Hotmail or Yahoo). However, they also append an ad tagline to the end of every email sent.

For Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Mail2World, $20 per year will remove all ads, increase storage to 2000MB, and give you a few other perks. Gmail does not yet have a pay option, but give them a chance. Just like Obi Wan, they're going to become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.