care2.com

What’s a Martian supposed to do when his very favourite email account on the whole planet tells him that its going to be closing in May this year. Well, this Martian after spending what must have been at least 0.0001 whole seconds crying his eyes out, quickly started looking for a new one. First place to look – obviously Ciao. I did my usual and checked out all the sites I’d never heard of before.

Think I drank too ...
...out of the page at me, and bopped me on the head. So I though “right you little care2 scumbag, you’re dead!!” So I quickly rammed the sharp mouse pointer up his ass, and clicked the button.

Uuumm, someone had given him 5 stars, so I decided to gut the little scumbag, and see what his insides looked like – I am a biologist afterall. I was just planning on stabbing around the little blighters heart for a while ... more

What’s a Martian supposed to do when his very favourite email account on the whole planet tells him that its going to be closing in May this year. Well, this Martian after spending what must have been at least 0.0001 whole seconds crying his eyes out, quickly started looking for a new one. First place to look – obviously Ciao. I did my usual and checked out all the sites I’d never heard of before.

Think I drank too much tea this morning though, as this care2 thingy jumped out of the page at me, and bopped me on the head. So I though “right you little care2 scumbag, you’re dead!!” So I quickly rammed the sharp mouse pointer up his ass, and clicked the button.

Uuumm, someone had given him 5 stars, so I decided to gut the little scumbag, and see what his insides looked like – I am a biologist afterall. I was just planning on stabbing around the little blighters heart for a while to see what he could offer me. Would he (Sorry!! I call him a HE because I’d obviously just not do this to a SHE site) be anything like my nearly dead 020??

Well, he survived my attack for a suprisingly long amount of time, so long in fact that I actually managed to get well past the violent point of registration, and in to the main nerve centre. Once there, I decided to stick around for even longer. I was quite impressed.

Access was gained pretty easily really. I only needed to make one small incision on the let hand side of the home page. It was difficult to find the correct spot because the writing there is all very small. A down point in my view as it definitely prevented me from going straight for the jugular and gaining my access the easy way. It’s a little like Yahoo, but more complicated as you have to beat your way through the sites massive armoured suit to find the e-mail.

As I said, registration was easy. I just whipped out my sword and ripped that one up real quick.

First up was the weedy little ‘CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT’. He was a real simpleton, and all he asked me was what I wanted to be called (so I told him my name – with which he screamed as he’d heard about how mean I am), which domain name I’d like to use (choice of 6, all of which are pretty ok - care2.com, moose-mail.com, snail-mail.com etc.). And then all he wanted was for me to type in a password a couple of times. It was only when he wouldn’t tell me how many MB he was going to give me that I got angry (I don’t think it actually tells you anywhere on the whole site).

Then I met the slightly beefier ‘PERSONALISE YOUR EXPERIENCE’ guy. Compared to some though, even he seemed like a wimp. I thanked him afterwards for not asking me too much stuff. Didn’t even want my whole address, just which country I lived in, along with my full name. Actually, now I think of it, he was less beef, and more frog.

I was now inside. Despite the fact that I’d just defeated its two guards, the site welcomed me with a nice welcome message. I no longer felt the need to continue my role as ‘Ben The Barbarian’, so I was pretty nice to it from that point on. It was hard not to be when the site is totally based on saving the environment (including Bingo and Bongo). ‘They say’, that every click (on the rest of the site, but I’m not too sure about the email), donates money to special organisations. Big cats, and the rainforest at the moment. Never too sure whether to believe these things or not, but they sound and look pretty genuine.

So, everything is quite animal looking. They have all the normal features for a free email account, but are perhaps a little less complicated than some, which I think is an excellent thing. I haven’t noticed a HEEEEEELLLLPP!!! Part, but its simple enough for most people to just work everything out for themselves anyway.
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It opens up on the INBOX. It looks much like Another.com at a glance, both being colourful, and the layout is also quite similar. Comparing it with Another again, it is better in the way that it uses the animals (cheeky monkey or a butterfly doing some very weird looking thing) so its not just colourful but also more interesting. However, Care2’s only really pointless feature comes in at the bottom of the page (every page and not just the inbox). It’s always there, and all it does is give you a couple of boxes to tick. It advertises a couple of the sites own newsletters, which may be interesting, but the room it takes up is just waaaaaay too much. The whole site would be at least 5.232 times better if it wasn’t there.

Also when opening your mail, it seems as if something hasn’t been lined up quite right. If you want to read the mail, be sure to check the date on it before opening, because when open, the date is half knocked off the page above it, and is made unreadable.
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Composing messages is super easy. As I like to do in my own sad little way of giving you people the most accurate information I possibly can, I sent myself a few messages from this account to some of my other ones. They were consistently delivered in my other accounts in an average of what must have been less than 1 minute. Not bad I thought.

They also give you a spell check thing, which unlike most others I’ve seen before, will allow you to check the spelling in a huge number of different languages. Useful to those people who have friends in different countries I suppose.
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Folders are really easy to set up, as with just about everything else, you just click on the paw prints (you’ll see), which actually do exactly what they say (without overcomplicating things). The only thing I was disappointed not to see was a filter system. I think those things really same a lot of time, as its just annoying moving stuff from your inbox to other folders al the time. That alone brings my usage of the site down a little. Also, instead of just having boring old yellow or orange folders, care2 has zebra striped ones…..coooooolll huh (or is that just the tea speaking??)!!!
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The Contacts section is really good. I like the fact that it doesn’t show me a load of useless information all the time. All I ever need to see is the persons name and their email address, so that’s what I get. There is room for their home address, telephone number etc etc. but that’s hidden away on back pages so I don’t have to use it or even look at it if I don’t want to.

Another useful feature that I’ve not seen many times before, is that it lets you input your friends ICQ numbers - obviously a good thing for those who use it. Not much good for me, but who knows, maybe one day I’ll become a bit more adventurous.
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Options on the site are limited. Not much choice where appearance is concerned, but I’m happy with it anyway. Basically, they just allow you to choose how many messages per page you want and whether you want confirmation of delivered messages or not. And also whether you want your WASTEBASKET (sounds much more environmentally friendly than TRASHCAN I suppose) emptied when you log out. Which I think is a god idea.

You can also set up 3 POP goes the weasel accounts,. But again – no real use to me at the moment, but good for some.
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After now using a Hotmail account for all my Ciao stuff, I have been pretty pleased with care2 so far in comparison. NO SPAM AT ALL!!!!! But then again, I have only been using it for just over a week.

Overall, I’m quite impressed with this free service (powered by COMMTOUCH). As I said before, it’s a little like Yahoo or something, and on the main part of the site there is even a search engine and an E-card thingy. It seems that many people must share my views as there are currently 1,594,670 members, and just today, 59,165 people have logged in. It’s updated very regularly too. Even the real time is displayed on the homepage (not GMT though but proof at least that it changes every so often).

Will I be using it after the death of my poor poor poor 020. I doubt it actually. Its good, but I’m sure there are better still to be found.

 

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