>>IMO there are some benefits to having your own domain for e-mail. One is when you sign up for services such as online banking. If you use an e-mail address on your own domain, you always have full control.

And you can use it in conversation, just drop a "yes, I'm a dot com" into it, feels great, funny, silly... never dull.

>>Historically the most common alternative was to use one of the free e-mail addresses normally provided by your ISP e.g. MyName@MyISP.com . This works OK until you change ISPs, in which case you either have to maintain that mailbox at your old ISP, or change the address you used for all those online services.

My main reason #2. The #1 was that I previously hosted my web content like that and then had to move it to new ISP... well, no, went to Geocities, which was fine for a few months. Then Yahoo bought them and started inserting their ads into my content without even asking me, let alone sharing a dime. So ndragan.com it is.

>But currently I would say that some 7 out of the 10 emails I receive are from places I never subscribed to (spam). My GMail email address does not have this issue currently. And for the professional appearance. I basic consider myself retired. And any work that requires a client to contact me via email, the email address means little to them.

I don't even know how much spam I get - Thunderbird's filters do a good job, and the few that pass are actually fun, as seen in that thread about Dmitry's spammer. But I'm actually barely getting any email at all. The 2-3 spam messages a day that I get are more of a keep-alive signal, just to know that the service still works :).

And yes, I think that's close to the definition of semi-retired.