Farewell to Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange email

I thought I'd take the opportunity to mention this as we are just days away from the end of an era.

In 1998, I finally took my first steps on the information superhighway, as it was popularly known at that time.  I wasn't really interested in the internet to start with, but eventually my curiosity got the better of me.  My first internet experiences were at my local library in 1998, although it would be fair to say that the staff were not prepared for this new technological revolution!  Then I reached a stage where I had enough money to buy my own computer.  In those days, Freeserve was bringing internet access to the masses - for free, all you needed was to pay your phone company's dial-up costs - so I signed up with them, and got my original email address, which has (free)served me well since 1998. I'm proud to be "old school" :)))

Freeserve, which subsequently became Wanadoo, which subsequently became Orange and finally EE.
But one thing remained the same: my "Freeserve" email address.  Along the way, I also got myself a couple of Googlemail (Gmail) addresses after I started blogging, but that Freeserve email address was my main contact.  Considering how fast things move in the world of technology it should be very surprising that something should stay the same for so long.  But finally, a couple of months ago, I received notification that all those Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange email accounts are finally closing down at the end of this month.  In the meantime, I've set up yet another Gmail address which will replace that much-loved Freeserve address.  It's been a lot of work and a long process having to notify all the companies I deal with, about my new email address - it certainly brings into focus just how much we use our email on a day to day basis.

If you are reading this and still have one of those email addresses, you only have a few days left to change it over; unless you have a forwarding arrangement to another email address, you will also lose all Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange emails as well.