Advantages and Disadvantages of Email
What is an Email?
On most networks, electronic mail (email) is a widely used application. In fact, of all TCP connections that Internet users establish, about one-half are sending and receiving email messages. Even though you may never need to write your own Internet application, studying email concepts is not waste of your time.
Internet Email concepts provide you with an excellent example of how to implement a simple yet effective Internet service. Each email message has a sender and a receiver, both of which have a user-interface into the networks electronic mail system. The network email systems consist of about going queue (collection of messages), a client process, a server process, and mailboxes for incoming mail.
Although the user-interface (the email application program) is often an integral part of an email system, it doesn’t have to be. In other words, the user-interface can be a separate client program that uses a client/server model to interact with the email system. A mailbox can refer to a user address (user identification and host name username @name. domain) or container file that stores email data.
Electronic mail, or Email, lets you communicate with other people on the Internet. Email is one of the basic Internet services, and by far, the most popular. It can be used for conversation purpose, to keep in touch with friends, get information, start relationships, or express your opinion. It is called Email because:
Electronic mail can be defined as the transmission of letters and memos from one computer to another. When Email originated in the 1970s, it was just the sending of messages.
The capability to send various items has rapidly become true of Email: users now can attach spreadsheets, business forms, lengthy documents, scanned images, faxed images, computer graphics, meeting schedules, sound, and video to their messages (and the list continues to expand).
Advantages and Disadvantages of Email
Advantages
1. It is a very fast medium of communication. Messages can be sent no time irrespective of the distance.
2. It is a very economic medium of communication. You are only charged the cost of being on-line whether you are sending it overseas or down the road.
3. It is a reliable mode of communication, that is, once the message is sent from a source computer it will definitely be delivered.
4. It is a versatile mode of communication, that is, any form of data such as text, graphics, sound or video can be sent through emails.
5. It is a secure medium of communication, that is, no one can access anybody’s email account without knowing the password.
Disadvantages
1. A slight error in the email address of the recipient is enough to prevent delivery of the message and even when you do everything right, there is always the chance of failure in one of the links between you and your recipient.
2. Sometimes viruses can enter your system through the attachments received in emails.
3. Emails are not checked regularly. As a result, sometimes the recipient may not read an important message on time.