When USA.Net went to charge only, my friend and I decided to just get a domain name and deal with that fee each year for our e-mail. I simply host it off my server at home, and have a backup server on the RioCar.Org server. So for the price of a domain a year, we have unlimited storage e-mail accounts, with as many aliases we want. I use a trick on my e-mail address now on forms where I toss in an _sitename after my username, and so if it starts getting spam, I simply toss the address into a file to watch it die. I don't have to do anything to create it, it just works.

Hotmail and other free accounts were great when they started. The idea of not having to change addresses with ISPs, etc... But unfortunatly the dot bomb occured, and with it went decent service. Now almost all "free" e-mail accounts are spam buckets.