People above say they find their Yahoo! mail account reliable. That may well be, but one of my friends had a Yahoo mail account and I couldn't contact her because unknown to her, her mailbox filled up and my mail to her was being bounced. With email accounts, you get what you pay for, so although it may seem reliable (because you're not aware otherwise) you may not be getting all your important mail, without knowing it.

That said, I agree that free email accounts like Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail are worth having as spam sinks. Whenever I have to give my email address online to anyone I don't particularly want to have it, I give them one of these email addresses, so if they pass it on to spammers (which happens) I don't get the garbage in my regular email box.

Yahoo also has groups (i.e. discussion forums a bit like Mudcat but not as good ;-)) which can be useful if you wanted to start your own (I have started a few myself and belong to a few more).