Email is probably the most familiar form of asynchronous electronic communication.
A far higher number of Internet users have access to email than to the World Wide Web and the volume of information exchanged by email is increasing all the time. Email is as fast and at least as cheap as using the telephone, but it provides a written record which can be archived and accessed at a later time. In additional to email, client software may offer news services, electronic conferencing or internet relay chat, and other groupware facilities. For the purposes of this primer, however, email is taken to mean the exchange of text-based messages between separate email accounts. Organising email messages Your archive of old email messages will quickly become an important part of your knowledge base.