The most widely used tool on the Internet is electronic mail (e-mail). E-mail is used to send written messages between individuals or groups of individuals, often separated by large distances. E-mail messages are generally sent from and received by mail servers — computers are dedicated to processing and directing e-mail. Once a server has received a message it directs it to the specific computer that the e-mail is addressed to. To send e-mail, the process is reversed. A very convenient and inexpensive way to transmit messages, e-mail has dramatically affected scientific, personal, and business communications.
E-mail is the basis of much organized exchange between groups of individuals. List servers, for example, make it possible to address a list of subscribers either in one-way communication, as in keeping interested people up-to-date on a product, or two-way communication, as in online discussion groups.
Another use of e-mail is Usenet, in which discussion on a particular subject are grouped together into newsgroups. There are thousands of newsgroups covering an extremely wide range of subjects. Messages to newsgroups are not posted directly to the user, but are accessible in the form of an ordered list on a dedicated local news server. The networking of these servers makes such discussions available worldwide. Associated software not only enables to choose which messages they want to read, but also to reply to them by posting messages to the newsgroup
Question:Why is e-mail widely used at present?
