Another.com is a fairly new website which gives you free e-mail. But not boring e-mail, oh no. They have come up with a unique idea allowing you to choose from over 60,000 endings for you e-mail address. So say I was young and very cool, then I may call myself thedanguy@hotsexymanclub.com.
OK, so maybe that's a bit ridiculous, but you can have some serious fun with the e-mail addresses. And of course you'll find pleanty of rude ones which are rather unmentionable here, but I am sure you can make yourself an idea about them.
Who this site is for...
Another.com is for people who need a free e-mail address plus a host of new services which have recently been added. If you can't find a good name on Hotmail, or even if you can, it's a much better idea to check out another.com and check out some of the top names.
Who this site is not for...
If you are a businessman setting up an e-mail for your company, you could try another.com but you'd have difficulty finding a name. You should go to Hotmail or Yahoo! and sign up, with a name like sharesplc@hotmail.com -sharestockplc@weallhatethestockmarket.com is not the best e-mail address!
So if it's for you, then in yo your browser tap www.another.com and the homepage will load. From here, you can go to: Offers, play, earn cash, money, the hive and music. Each of these functions will be described later on, but first we start with the important bit - e-mail.
Another.com e-mail...
The person who came up
with this system, I must say, had a fantastic idea. What happens is that you sign up and then your e-mail is, for example, danieletheridge@another.com. But, the point is, you can set up extra e-mail addresses, which I will tell you about now...
What you do is you go to a screen and you do a search, so, as it says on the homepage, where they have topical e-mail addresses, you may search for politics and get lameduck.co.uk as a possibility for an e-mail address. The list goes on - barbecue, you get beefburger.co.uk...
You can have up to five of these e-mail addresses, which can be deleted and changed, and you may even want to delete your danieletheridge@another.com e-mail address - it is a bit boring and stands out compared to the others in the huge selection.
Also, the pages are carefully laid out so they are easy to read and do not confuse your eyes. The navigation around the e-mail area is very simple, and if you do have problems with the colours on the screen, then why not edit your colour scheme?
You also receive the regular another.com newsletter - The Orange Dot - which keeps you up to date with changes around the site, but with, of course, a heavy mass of advertising which keeps the site alive. On the homepage, in fact, about half of it is dedicated to publicity.
You also have the options of an address book, which unlike with other e-mail services, is surprisingly easy-to-use. YOu just add the people and select the names of people on the list who you want to send the same e-mail to - it's that simple!
Attachments on another.com are not easy to use, but if you crack the code then you'll find the system easy to use and also pretty reliable. Only on rare occassions (and often the most important ones) do I find that attachments do not arrive.
Another.com comes across to me as a very virus-free website, as I have not yet experienced any problems with it. But, I must say, it is only a matter of time before someone decides to hack in or spread a virus around another.com.
They are very reliable - I find e-mails reach colleagues very quickly and I haven't yet experienced a situation whereby an e-mail I send does not arrive. I think another.com should be very proud of their e-mail service!
*Please note the e-mail address used in this section is not true and made up on the spur of the moment.
Other services...
I don't really use the other services on another.com that much, as I feel a bit old. But I'll tell you a little bit about them, because no other opinion I've read has really made the effort to tell us about the full service the offer. Here's a brief description about each of them...
Music: This page is a bit of an advert, but from here you get taken to other websites on which you will find music for sale, with special offers for another.com users. It just takes you straight to the latest releases, which I can tell you nothing about as I am so old.
Money: This is another advert page. From here you can go to the websites of credit and debit card companies, but this time there's no special deal if you're a member of another.com - it's just to advertise and make money for the site to keep it running!
Offers: Now my mum would love this page - offers! Here, another.com have some special deals with other websites allowing you to buy items at cheaper prices, and you can search for deals, so there must be a huge amount out there!
The Hive: This is a bit like a Community Centre. Here, there are chatrooms exclusively for members and all sorts of other things, like sending e-greetings for free. And, you can also get a domain name off the website, but I believe you have to pay £9.99 inc. vat per year.
Earn Cash: The idea of the names on all these pages is to lure you to them. But this is yet another page with adverts, and this time for employment websites. You get taken straight to them where you can apply for jobs and find out about the companies offering them.
Play: Guess what? This page is covered with adverts! This time you can go to websites with cash draws and also pages with flash games you can play. Very entertaining, but also rather advert loaded, don't you think? Well, I suppose we will have to put up with it.
Another.com for its e-mail service is very, very good, but if you're looking for the services such as music etc, it's probably a good idea to go to another site, because this really doesn't have what you think it does on that front.
Layout: The pages are well designed and carefully laid out, so you do not have trouble understanding what is on the page. Everything is neat and there are no unnecessary bits, and you can see that lots and lots of time has gone in to making sure the pages look right. However, the colours!...
Navigation: I have yet to find a dead link* on another.com, which is quite rare, because I find them quite regularly on sites even as high-profile as Yahoo! so that is a good record, and I must say a good achievement, because on such a big site it is not easy to maintain it all.
Speed: Another.com is very fast and I rarely wait more than five seconds for a page to load. But as the site expands, more ads are appearing, pages are getting bigger and they are going to start taking longer to load. And with lots of new members, there'll be even more strain!
Features: Another.com has a huge range of features. You can go to all sorts of things - registering domains, e-mail, shopping... but they could expand even more in to areas such as searching and perhaps live news. But often we think it's a feature, but it's just adverts, so look out.
Customer Service: This is one thing I am not pleased with. I sent Customer Services an e-mail reporting a problem and they sent me an e-mail back, not even bothering to say thank-you, just that 'Your problem has been fixed.' In other words, 'Have you got a problem?!'
If you need e-mail, then sign up for another.com. If you nned shopping cheap, then sign up for another.com. But if you need any of the other services that appear to be there, then don't bother - just go to another website offering the same service. And don't forget to log out!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
May 31st, 2001
very helpful by (96%):
helpful by (4%):
