The minutes to Apple's quarterly analyst conference call are melting away faster than a Popsicle on a Pentium 4, which means that a lot of you are stressing out over the Beat The Analysts contest and whether your prediction of Apple's Q2 results was close enough to bring you glory, riches, and the adoration of millions of screaming fans (not to mention a free t-shirt or a shrinkwrapped copy of System 6.0.7), or so wildly inaccurate that we'll make fun of you publicly and you'll have to move to Nepal and raise goats to escape the constant jeering. Well, relax-- the die is cast and there's nothing you can do about it now, so you might as well put it out of your mind and accept the potential goat-herding consequences as they come.

Still, we can understand that, with so much on the line, you might be having a tough time thinking about other things, so we'll help you out a little. Perhaps you've been hearing some grumbling over the past several months from people who use free web-based email services like Yahoo! and Hotmail. Perhaps you're one of the people doing the grumbling. According to CNET, Microsoft recently made several Hotmail policy changes (including deleting free accounts that hadn't been checked for a month and blithely dumping mail from free accounts that were over their 2 MB storage quota), hoping to nudge all those freeloaders into upgrading to the $19.95-a-year "premium" account. CNET also reports that Yahoo! is asking customers to ante up $29.99 a year for certain formerly free mail services, such as Mail Forwarding.

This all sounds vaguely reminiscent of the free ISP craze that crashed and burned in the dotcom wreckage. So is the free email ride over? Not necessarily. Remember, signing up for an iTools account is still free, and that comes with a Mac.com email account. "But AtAT," we hear you whine, "that doesn't count, because I can't check that mail in a web browser at work like I can with Hotmail and Yahoo!" Oh, no? Try telling that to faithful viewer Brian Burrow, who just pointed out that Apple is beta-testing its new Webmail service. Not so gabby now, are ya, Mr. Smarty-Pants?

It's just a beta, as we said, but so far there's lots to like about Apple's attempt to out-Hotmail Hotmail. For one thing, it's got an interface immediately familiar to users of Mac OS X's Mail application-- spiffy. Webmail can auto-reply to messages, as well as forward all email to another account. In our quick test, attaching files worked like a charm. It's even got a cute feature in its preferences that lets you upload a photo that will be inserted into all of your outgoing messages as a graphical signature. You can use it to check a separate third-party POP account, as well as your Mac.com email. Heck, it's even available in English and Japanese, and we bet other languages are coming. Best of all, there's a reasonably healthy 5 MB mail limit, and you don't need to sell your soul to Passport to use it. Heck, if Apple could find some way to sync up the Mac OS X Address Book to Webmail's online version, life would be sweet indeed.

So Apple may well have a Hotmail-killer on its hands, here-- provided it doesn't do something sketchy like charging extra for iTools members to use it. We suppose we'll see once Apple officially rolls out the release version. In the meantime, play with the beta, email Apple your feedback, and try to keep your mind off of the possibility of a lifetime of Nepalese goat-herding. It's just not healthy.