We did one of these a while back, but services change and grow, get worse, better, alter storage space. So I ask: What do you find to be the best free email service out there? I am altering email providers in the coming months, and am trying to figure out where to go with it.
Thoughts?
Cartooniverse
I expect the overwhelming response to this question will quite rightly be Gmail. It has plentiful storage, and exceptional indexing, searching, and organizing abilities, particularly in its organization of messages into “threads”.
I’ve used Gmail and hotmail.
Gmail is absolutely brilliant and gets continually better.
Hotmail…not so much.
I used hotmail years ago but then switched entirely over to my University account. By chance just as I was graduating and was thinking about switching to a free webmail account, an acquaintance offered me an invitation to this new email service google was testing out. I have been using Gmail since then and have really liked it.
I haven’t had an opportunity to compare the more recent versions of other free webmail accounts, but I like gmail a lot and have heard a fair amount of frustration about other services.
Gmail. Love it; I want to rub its feet and have its babies.
Yahoo mail is pretty good too. But yeah, Gmail is the winner, hands down. Damn near perfect.
And it’s still in BETA, just think of how good it will be when it’s all growed up! (Actually it’ll probably be sentient and malevolent, but let’s just dream, shall we?)
Gmail. Free imap, about 7 gig storage, allowing aliases. For a free service it’s unbeatable. Some people prefer to not use labels though.
I’ve used Hotmail (though not for several years), Yahoo (formerly heavily, now sparingly) and gmail (my current primary email.) By far, gmail has been the best. As has been mentioned, it has a lot of storage, good searching and groups messages into threads (Original: Reply: Reply and so on).
Another vote for Gmail. I get about one spam message a month making it to my in box, and absolutely nothing that isn’t spam makes it to the spam box.
Plus it has a chat feature, with other Gmail users. Plus you can see when other contacts are logged into their Gmail account.
Haha, I clicked on this thread out of curiosity just in case there was some utterly wonderful e-mail thingy out there better than Google and all unknown to me.
Nope, it looks as thought we all love Google. I really can’t imagine going back to Hotmail now. 
I know that nobody has mentioned it yet, but I prefer Gmail. It’s so good it’s scary.
Those Google people are scary, what with their free super-duper-cool stuff. They’re up to no good, I tellya!
GMail. Hands down and no questions asked.
Gmail, then Yahoo (which I think has unlimited free storage now). Hotmail is a distant third.
In case someone hasn’t mentioned it, GMail. 
I love it.
Jumping on the gmail bandwagon - wheeeeeeeee.
Their spam filter is great. I’m regularly getting spam, but none of it hits my inbox, it all automagically gets filtered into the junk folder, and I’ve yet to have a single piece of legitimate email get eaten.
I don’t understand your complaint about web-based mail services “altering” storage space, since they almost never decrease the amount of storage. But I’ll go against the grain and say that I prefer Yahoo! mail, partly because I like the folder-based interface better but more because it integrates well with the email account I have through my AT&T DSL account. And as someone pointed out, Yahoo! mail offers unlimited storage. (This doesn’t much matter to me, because I ultimately download everything to an Outlook archive file.)
Realistically, though, the big thing I want from a mail service is the opportunity to get a sensible-sounding mail address (like cecil.adams@example.com or cadams@example.com instead of something goofy like cecil5309@example.com).
I thought the same thing because I don’t like email addresses with numbers in them, until I discovered that with gmail I can get my real name (which is extremely common) if I add a dot something after it, like this: myrealname.sdmb@gmail.com. I have a .jobs for my job searching email addy and others for various other things. Plus, I can send mail from any address regardless of which one I log into and I check all mail at one time with Gmail Manager. Oh, happy day! 
On occasion I check my ancient yahoo email, but it’s mostly just spam now. Never got spam in my gmail inbox, though. Love, love, LOVE gmail! 
Never had Hotmail, had AOL’s mail app for a few years but got rid of it, have Yahoo-mail but don’t use it, have Gmail and love it.
I’ve almost completely avoided Outlook style mail clients. Family members often ask me “how do I do X in Outlook?”, and I can honestly plead ignorance. It’s great. I do have the Apple Mail app and dot-Mac for the times when I encounter a site that won’t accept a Gmail address, but those are few and far between so I seldom use it.
Gmail is best for most purposes.
If you want an email address for posting to message boards and other spam magnets, I’d recommend an operation that has a Challenge-Response (C/R) system.
Under such a scheme, anybody who is not on your whitelist will not successfully email you, unless they click a link on an automated reply message.
Mailblocks used to offer such a free service, but they stopped after AOL took them over. Bluebottle offered a free service until last month – they gave their customers about 9 days notice.
Inbox.com offers free email that can be configured with a C/R system, though it will not work that way by default. I signed up with them a few days ago. The SDMB did not accept the address initially, but an assistant webmaster eventually worked things out.
If you use your email addy for business though, C/R might very well annoy your clients, customers and associates.