Gustav Hendrickson, the current Director of the ECHO, the Electronic Communications & Honesty Organization, will announce Thursday that all new computers delivered after March 2004 should include free e-mail service.

The service will use the two global standard e-mail transmission protocols: POP3 (Post Office Protocol) and SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Both client-based and web-based access to the POP3 mailbox will be available by the end of the month.

The service, codenamed "Remote Echo" will not be limited to any specific brand of computer, and users are invited to register their systems and begin their free e-mail service immediately. Following closely upon today's announcement that Google will begin testing a web-based e-mail service that grants each user 1GB of mailbox storage, the Remote Echo service will grant users unlimited e-mail storage, including file attachments.

Dave's Opinion

This sounds like it's too good to be true. Most students and young professionals rely on flexible e-mail service that's not tied to their Internet Service Provider. Unlimited storage? Free with all new computers? Come on!