Mike,
I can access my home email through my ISPs page, and I can access my consulting company's email in a similar manner. But that takes too long to login and out of 4 separate accounts (1 at home for me, 1 for my wife, 2 at work for different reasons). I also usually have an email address at the client's site but, typically, I don't care to check it when I'm not there.
Right now I can go to Hotmail and click POP Mail and check all 4 at once. I do this 10 times a day probably, maybe more (on my way to check in on TBN /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif). Now they're moving that feature to the pay version only. I'm not opposed to paying for a good service, but Hotmail is so overloaded with spam, I don't think it is worth the money.
Plus, I was a member of Photopoint since the beginning. When they decide to switch to a pay site, I gladly ponied up the money. A few weeks later, they shut down without warning and without a refund. I had over 600 pictures up there; with untold number of hours spent arranging them into albums and adding captions and such. Now I'm a little shy of sites switching from free to pay.
I guess the days of cool free stuff on the Internet are almost gone.
--Brad