talk21.com

Advantages: It's free
Disadvantages: Bad performance, design, bugs, adverts

UPDATE Please note that since writing this review Talk21 has been scrapped and users moved onto Yahoo so this review no longer applies but remains for historic curiosity. ---- talk21 is the free email service provided by British Telecom. There are many things to dislike BT for and this is no exception. I registered for talk21 about 5 years ago when there was not a lot of choice of free email services. I chose talk21 simply because at that time ...
...fredbloggs1234567 you would have had to have at hotmail or yahoo). However I don't know if this is the case any more now that there are a lot more people signed up. I have used it for all of this time but recently abandoned it because it was becoming too annoying. Over the years it has hardly been improved at all. The only reason I stuck with it for so long is that I couldn't be bothered to inform everybody of my new email address. Firstly, what ... Read review

Advantages: Adequate storage space (250Mb)
Disadvantages: Worse than yahoo, no pop/smtp access, slow, banner ads, spam, features (like the free sms) have been removed.

**Update 27/4/2004** This is the synopsis of what has happened post team up with Yahoo. Basically talk21 has turned into Yahoo, but with a more unreliable sign in. Just join Yahoo mail instead. Compared to the old talk21 service, the new BT yahoo replacement has a much better interface and a slightly increased mailbox and seems a bit more reliable, so overall it seems like an improvement over the old talk21. However, a big disadvantage is that it ...
...for their paid service. It's just a big advert for their paid service and not a particularly good one. The old review is still below ---------------------------------------------------------- I'm writing this review of talk21 as I'm shocked and appalled that ciao still rates it in the top 5 free email providers. Having read some of the reviews I can understand why: most of the reviews that praise the talk21 service are over 2 years old. The current ... Read review

Advantages: Lots of good features
Disadvantages: None as yet!

There are so many different web mail services out there that it's difficult to choose between them. Talk21 is run by bt, originally as a web based email service for btclick customers, although it has always been available to anyone who wants an account. The reason I first opened a talk21 account is that they have a service which will send an sms (text message) to your mobile phone whenever you get new emails. I was looking for a free service which ...
...which was reliable. Since I joined they have improved this so that you also get the subject line of the email. I should say that I prefer to use a 'proper' POP3 account as my main email address rather than a web mail service, simply so that I can read and write emails offline, and use complex sets of folders and filtering. I use my talk21 account to forward messages to so that I know when I have important emails. I can then access them online if ... Read review

Advantages: Reliable, fast, functional
Disadvantages: Nothing special

Bureaucratic Tendencies ... Barely Tenable ... Bloody Terrible ...Badly Turned Out ... Beautifully Tense ... Boringly Turgid ... Benefits Tiny ... Bodged-up Tools ... Buncha T***s ... Bendy Toes (eh?) ... Whatever!!! We've all got our views about BRITISH TELECOM and they're almost universally critical these days. Mrs D and I are as very unimpressed as anyone in this regard, but there is one offering in the BT stable which is difficult to fault, and ...
...contribution altruistically to the government's desire to get the UK on line and the 21 in the name refers to the 21st century apparently. For a free e-mail service, Talk21 is an amazingly strong offering. It offers almost 5Mb of web space for storing the messages and there's a pretty unique filtering function which allows you to send off junk mail to a trash can or alternatively send all messages from an individual e-mail account into a designated ... Read review

Advantages: Easy to use, you can send text messages, you can get talk21 through Outlook Express etc...
Disadvantages: not much!

...THE SITE At talk21.com you can also find links to other BT sites, which are just as fast as the talk21 site, the links include MUSIC, NEWS, ENTERTAINMENT and many more so it is a good idea to have this site as your homepage. Other email sites such as Hotmail also have this feature though… ADDRESS BOOK The Address Book section on talk21 is called ‘Contacts’ and in this section of the site you can keep records of your friends email ...
...If you often send emails to a group of people then the ‘Groups’ section is very handy. SMS NOTIFICATION The SMS notification sends a text message to your mobile when you get a new email, and from scanning through other ciao reviews I hear that this feature is helpful. Although I have never used it because I get far too much email and I doubt my mobile could cope with all the messages – and it would become an annoyance getting ... Read review