INTRODUCTION

Electronic mail, or E-Mail for short, allows one to send and receive messages to and from other individuals with the aid of a telecommunications network, a host computer, and software. The telecommunications network used is the Internet. The SGI mainframe, located in the computer centre, serves as the host computer. Finally, the text-based software program most people use for E-Mail is Pine and is executed from the SGI host computer itself. The graphics-based software program most people use for E-Mail is called Pegasus Mail and is executed from the desktop computer. Although Pegasus Mail is available free of charge from the University Computer Centre at the Student Consultant desk in the Student Computer Lab, you must provide the diskette.

ADDRESSING E-MAIL

Just like the mail sent through Canada Post, an electronic mail item requires two pieces of information: a name and an address. The name is the userid of the recipient. The address is the Internet address of the recipient. The name and Internet address of the recipient are always typed as one long string of characters with an @ symbol separating the name from the Internet address. For example, to send E-Mail to the President of the United States, you would type: president@whitehouse.gov. If you are sending E-Mail to someone at the University of Windsor, however, you only need to type their userid without @server.uwindsor.ca, which is the Internet address for the University of Windsor.