E-mail vs. Postal Service

What can I say...During the discussion of this topic in class, a lot of similarities and differences were brought up. Here were some of the key topics discussed:

• Addresses - There are obvious differences between an e-mail address and a postal service address. But I'll go ahead and type it out. e-mail addresses consist of a username at (@) a domain name (ex. johndoe@msn.com) while a postal service address consists of a name, the person's address, city, state, and zip code.

• Weight - Weight was an interesting topic to be had in class that brought up some good points. First, e-mail is weighed in based on a bytes scale whereas postal mail is weighed in on a metric scale. Second, in the postal service world, the heavier the mail, the higher the cost is for mailing it out while through e-mail, it doesn't cost a penny to send an e-mail regardless of content size (The only cost I can think of is the cost of your e-mail space).

• Packages - Lastly, packages also was a rather interesting topic to bring up between the two types of mail. In terms of e-mail, a package would pretty much be what you would call an attachment on an e-mail, in which the attachment could be anything from a text document to a music file. I suppose in a postal service environment, a package could be anything from a Music CD or a book.