What internet and email "provider" do you use?

I have been a long time Earthlink customer, but with Mobile Me coming out, I am considering using a .me account for my email (I just purchased my first Mac yesterday).

I will be purchasing a iPhone 3G in a few months, hence the interest in the .me email account. However, I have seen that many people here use Gmail accounts. Will Gmail have any benefits over Mobile Me? Why is Gmail so popular? Since I am not very tech savvy, I will need something that is easy to set up on the iPhone.

Anyone here use AT&T for their internet service provider? They offer "bundled" packages that might save me some money, but not sure if the iPhone plans qualify for "bundling."

Thanks guys. I look forward to learning all about the Mac with all of the great help you guys provide!

To be honest i dont know enough about .me to describe its benefits/disadvantages, but personally i use a gmail account because its probably the best free email provider that works with apple mail, and i think thats the same case with a lot of other people here. It's free, and it works really well. .me of course is designed for super smooth integration with the iPhone 3G and its features include more than just e-mail (photos, contacts, calander etc) ....but thats why you have to pay for it. Gmail is purely for e-mail purposes (as far as im aware). It will be no problem setting up with the iPhone either.

ISP: Sky (UK)
Primary email: Gmail

Gmail is pretty good. It works fine with my MacBook and my iPhone and also gives me a very good web interface when I need to access the mailbox from a Windows machine (for example).

With a fairly good 6GB of space you can use your gmail account to store quite a lot if you want. I have 2 gmail accounts, one for my primary email address and another that I use to aggregate all of my smaller mail account (those relating to my domain names for example) - I then have this on my Mac and iPhone as well.

I also have a Hotmail account which I hate but keep hold of it for my friends on MSN and I have a Yahoo! account which I really don't like - I only keep this active for Yahoo related services like the fantasy football.

Anyway - back to the point(s)... Gmail is super easy to setup on your iPhone - I believe you can do right from the iPhone which is ok - but if you have your gmail setup in mail.app then the first time you connect your iPhone to iTunes it will ask if you want it to setup the mail account for you - it doesn't come much easier than that.

MobileMe will offer a little more than a simple mail service. As has been pointed out, you also get a place to keep images etc - which would be great if you had 2 macs - you could perhaps use the service to keep the macs synced if you wish. Personally I think the price is a little harsh for an email address and some space in the cloud but there are many people that are very happy with the service that .mac offers. I guess if I had 2 macs I might feel a little differently about it...

the .me service integrates with windows too. Meaning you don't need to have all mac's to keep them synched.

isp - comcast
email - gmail

ISP - Verizon FIOS (Fiber optic, very fast)

email and web hosting - earthlink, who hosts my domain and provides me with email addresses (up to 10) on my plan. I've been with them since they were Netcom, then Mindspring, and now earthlink.

Then again, I don't have any fancy smart phones that need interface with either (though that is provided by Verizon, but it's just a phone.) I use my phone to, you know, call people and talk to them.

ISP: AT&T DSL

Email: Primary AT&T Yahoo - Secondary Gmail

ISP: Comcast
Email: .Mac

I recently switched to both of these. Previously, I had Qwest DSL which was incredible slow, 1.5MB download.

I switched to .Mac because of the new features it will be having and to use with my iPhone.

ISP, Shaw Cable Vancouver Canada
Email, Primary supplied by ISP, secondary is hotmail and the third is from my web host that hosts my car clubs website.

Pretty happy with Shaw, been with them for over 7 years in the Greater Vancouver area, as evidenced by my email handle ending in 2001 not sure about Me or Mobile Me, and having never signed up for .mac....well it's a mute story.

ISP: Roadrunner Cable (15Mb/s)

Email: My own website email and Gmail

I was one of the first people on gmail, back when it was really hard to get invites. Personally I think it is awesome! Good amount of storage, web access, integrates via IMAP with both my Mac and my Blackberry, I can even access it via Links (text web browser) on any of my *NIX machines.

I was with AT&T - DSL but recently switched back to cable - Bright House. Mail is .mac

Godaddy hosts my domains and my email for about $30/year. They have robust spam filters and the mail servers have good uptime, usually one or two brief outages per year. AT&T is my DSL provider, 5MB down / 800k up for $35/month.

Comcast and Gmail.

isp: Terra Networks
email: Gmail (lovely on my Nokia 3250)

ISP Verizon FIOS
Yahoo.com

Verizon FIOS and gmail. good combo

I use Gmail and it works very well through the Mail app in OS X - incase you were wondering. I'm thinking of setting up a Yahoo! account just to have.