Use GMail: it only loads images in emails after you click on the "load external images in this email" link.

Good point. Gmail is really slick and I would highly recommend it. One thing holding me back from using it exclusively as my main account is that I can't access it using the browser on my PDA. I can access my regular account from any IMAP email client, over the web, or even ssh into the server and use PINE to read it.

If google expands their service to include more (primitive) browsers, I may switch over in the future.

By the way, I have some gmail invitations to give away in case anyone wants a gmail account! It's unequivocally better than hotmail.

This just in: Thunderbird is amazing! Just kidding. But like gmail, it blocks external images from loading until you give it explicit permission. On the other hand, it has on my system a whopping 168MB memory footprint!! That's even worse than it's memory munching big brother mozilla.

If you want to try Thunderbird, you can get it here:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

hmm...interesting. im learning so much, but retaining so little.

i dont like that gmail makes it very difficult to delete emails. i have to click three different times to delete one email, and then i get a taunting msg that essentially says, "only losers delete emails, what is wrong with you?"

gmail is encouraging my pack-rat habits that i am desperately trying to pull away from. boo gmail. boo.

Well, gmail's "gift" of 1GB of space is not entirely altruistic. Google, by creating this service, is building a huge database of people's personal communication. By analyzing the text of your email messages, they can very specifically target advertisements toward your personality.

The more messages to and from you they have stored, the more likely they are to place ads on the screen that appeal to you. When they do that, and you click on the ads, Google gets revenue. Deleting messages screws with the model.

That being said, I see nothing philosophically wrong with the concept. TV is, for instance, supported by advertising. If you want TV without commercials, you pay more. And maybe, with targetted advertising, I will discover a product that will, materialistic tendencies aside, make my life better.

I am a digital (and real life) pack-rat, so I am not so familiar with the concept of "delete" and I have not tried to do so using gmail. Though I can see how it would be annoying to confirm and reconfirm and reconfirm a simple command. Maybe Microsoft's hotmail can regain the upper hand with a patented one-click-delete system. Why didn't anyone consult me?