Electronic mail is one of the most advantageous aspects of the internet. If you have an account with an ISP then you will have an eMail address. This consists of two parts - some aspect of your name like freds followed by the at sign (@ or shift 2) and some aspect of your ISP host.
If Fred Smith's ISP is www.hostname.com.au then his eMail address may end up being freds@hostname.com.au.
You can get free eMail at a number of places on the Internet. One such place is Yahoo at
mail.yahoo.com
Another is mailExcite at
www.mailexcite.com
At these sites, and others, you sign up and then, whenever you are on the Internet you can go to this site and get your eMail. The advantage is that you don't have to remember how to set up the fiddly bits and pieces in the browser's preferences - all you need is your login name and your password.
One of the unfortunate, but logical results, of having 45 million people on the Internet is that there is no 'White Pages' of all the eMail addresses. You cannot look up somebody's name and find out their eMail. If you know their host computer, then you might be lucky to have a white pages for that computer. Usually though the easiest way to find out somebody's eMail address is to phone them (or write to them using pen and paper) and ask them what it is.
At home, it is probably preferable to have an email specific software program. You can use Microsoft Outlook, which is part of the Internet Explorer download, or you might prefer Eudora. There are many. Note that Microsoft Outlook has been the subject of virus attacks in recent years. It is the subject because it is the most common.