Hundreds million people worldwide use emails. This type of communication was one of the first to develop after the Internet had appeared. These days emails have not lost their popularity, successfully rivalling more comfortable and quick instant messaging technologies. To send documents, music and video files or pictures, one should use the attachment feature. This feature is available in all major email clients and web based email services.
The term "attachment" is used to denote a file or a group of files attached to an email message. It is possible to attach almost any type of file and send it to the recipient. This function is very useful if you need to exchange various types of files and information.
The development of communication technologies has made it possible to transfer huge amounts of data between continents. Wide broadband channels allow transferring at the speed up to 2Gb/sec. Those who use these broadband channels happily use huge possibilities and exchange large files between each other. It's not weird to see users sending large email attachments to exchange music, video, pictures and texts.
However, many users still use the archaic dial-up connection, especially in those countries where the telecommunications sector is still at the stage of development. For those, it is extremely uncomfortable to download large email attachments, as they both have to pay for the time they are online and for the telephone line usage. Besides, they cannot comfortably surf when the email attachment is being downloaded. All this makes dial-up users frown upon large email attachments.
Lots of user use free email services, which have storage limits and that is why they can't use the email attachment function even if they have broadband connection. However, new big email providers like Google's Gmail enable their users to store up to 2 Gbs of data. They even provide their users with special applications to make using their email boxes comfortable and efficient. For example, Google lets users download their Gmail Explorer which installs into the system as a separate logical segment.
Spam filters may also occur to be an obstacle against using the email attachment feature. These filters against spam and viruses may appear both at the mail provider servers and at your Internet Service Provider level. Such scripts usually do not allow sending large attachments as these are very hard for them to scan because of their size. That is why, when sending a large attachment, make sure your correspondent is able to receive such, as you may find your message coming without any files attached.
The email attachment function is very useful and caters to those, who want to send and receive large files without actually surfing the Internet. All you need is an email client application and Internet connection. Sometimes it is possible to use email even if you can't surf the Internet - you connect through your local network to the mail server and may receive and send email. Attachments included. However, you should still respect other users and remember that not everyone is as happy as you to be able to send email with attachments.