How to email pictures

Email was originally used to send plain text. Then it evolved so that you could send formatted text (coloured, bold, etc.) What you are actually doing is sending a web page, with hidden code, that makes the file twice as large.

If you then attach images, the sky's the limit. I had some twit send me five ENORMOUS image files, attached to an email. I was out at the time so they didn't get downloaded immediately. The result was that they filled the server Inbox and all subsequent messages got bounced with "Inbox full" reported. Needless to say, some of my friends and customers were unimpressed to have their orders and enquiries bounced back.

My wife also has friends who do this. They send her amusing cartoons and even MOVIES, instead of simply including a link to them. These have the same effect of blocking incoming emails (including order confirmations from "Amazon", etc.) Frequent requests for her friends to STOP doing this fell on deaf ears. So now those friends are in the "spam" list.

Some people are too polite to complain and simply put up with it but it creates bad feelings. You might wonder why you get terse replies.

Bear in mind, too, that some people use wireless "dongles" or a satellite link for Internet access. They may be capped at as little as 3 GigaBytes of data per month. If they exceed the limit, they get charged a huge penalty for each extra MegaByte!

So the correct way to "send" images and other large files is to upload them to your "Dropbox" (or to Facebook or similar free image hosting service) and email ONLY the link to the files or images. That way you won't fill anyone's Inbox and the recipient can download the file(s) at their leisure (or not).

In addition, it's inefficient to attach files to emails because the computer has to convert such files to ASCII text. Therefore, even if you zip the file, it will be made larger by conversion to ASCII text before sending. Then it must be converted back by the recipient, with a risk of corruption and "this file is unreadable".

In contrast, if you use Dropbox.com to upload a file, it remains zipped. All you have to do is email the recipient(s) the download link and they can get the file at their convenience. Dropbox normally gives you 2GB of space to use for uploads but click HERE and you'll get 2.25GB. Sign up for Dropbox (free) then get your own referral link and give it to your friends on Facebook and elsewhere. Each time somebody signs up (free) using your link, they will get 2.25GB and you will gain another 0.25GB, up to a maximum of 10GB. You can use it for storage or for transferring files to another computer. You can even use your own referral link to sign up a second computer owned by you (with a different email address) so that it gets its own Dropbox space.

Get your (free) Dropbox account: click HERE

Send this page address - CLICK HERE - to a friend !