I lust after a personalized e-mail address the way others covet vanity license plates.

Because I choose to do without a car, the plate thing means little to me. But as I cruise the information superhighway, I insist on having a distinctive, unique set of wheels.

My personal e-mail address isn’t a virtual ad for America Online, Comcast or other firms that hand out e-mail accounts to customers yet decide how everything to the right of the @ symbol will read.

My address fully reflects my identity because I control everything to the left and right of the symbol.

It’s portable. If I switch Internet-service providers, I don’t have to endure the hassle of migrating to a new e-mail address and notifying all the people with whom I exchange messages. My address is all mine and therefore never changes.

It just works. Messages sent to my personal address hit my e-mail program’s inbox without fail, and my replies also promptly reach their targets.

(It’s also private. I won’t publish my address for all spammers to see and add to their nefarious databases. So let’s pretend it’s julioyourtechdude.com.)

Arranging all of this isn’t rocket science, but it took longer than I would have liked.

If you want to create your own e-mail address for personal use, this is the article for you. I’ve endured expense and aggravation so you don’t have to.

The first step to setting up personalized e-mail is buying a domain name – that’s the part of an e-mail address to the right of the @ symbol.

First, I had to dream up a domain name that hadn’t been claimed – ojeda.com and zapata.com already belong to other people, for instance, so I can’t use julioojeda.com or juliozapata.com as my personal e-mail address.

Then, I had to register and pay for my domain name via an Internet company known as a domain-name registrar.

Hundreds of such firms exist. Some are more reputable than others. You’re generally safe with one approved by the nonprofit Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (see www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html for a list of accredited registrars).

A typical yearly fee for registering a domain name ending in “.com” hovered around $35 when I went shopping for a registrar, but I wanted a better deal. So, with misgivings, I cast my lot with Go Daddy Software (www.godaddy.com) for $9 a year.

More than a year later, I’m still waiting for a gotcha. Go Daddy is astonishingly full-service for a cut-rate service firm, even answering its phones around the clock.

All such firms will set up the behind-the-scenes services for zapping e-mail to and from users’ personalized addresses.

GoDaddy.com was an obvious option for me because it attaches an e-mail account to a domain name for as little as $10 a year. Once I set up an account, e-mail flowed easily to and from my personalized address via any desktop e-mail application.

None of GoDaddy’s mail-account levels allow for more than 20 megabytes of online storage, however. That’s too restrictive for those, like me, who get lots of messages that are often accompanied by large file attachments.

I also tried the Yahoo online behemoth in separate incarnations, Yahoo Domains (http://domains.yahoo.com) and Yahoo Mail (http://mail.yahoo.com).

Three factors turned me off the two Yahoos: Meager online-storage allocations, e-mail-only technical support and obscure error messages that often kept me from setting up e-mail accounts using the services’ automated systems.

I used my domain name to set up e-mail accounts with two top ISPs, Minneapolis-based VISI.com and Minnetonka, Minn.-based US Internet.

Neither VISI.com nor US Internet let me down on the e-mail front. Messages coursed to and from my personal address quickly and reliably. I could use any desktop e-mail app – no Yahoo Mail-like limitations here – or a Web-mail interface.

The problem with VISI.com and US Internet: cost.

The fees to use VISI.com as an e-mail provider are prohibitive, at least for me. VISI.com does offer one juicy lure: Those lacking a domain name can get it online through the ISP at no extra cost.

US Internet is more affordable for basic e-mail, but adding MessageXchange costs an extra $10 a month. That fee covers up to five e-mail accounts, though, so it’s a good group rate.

After road-testing Minnesota-based e-mail providers, I turned to one in Australia. FastMail.FM (www.fastmail.fm) does nothing but e-mail, unlike the multipurpose firms mentioned elsewhere in this article.

FastMail.FM offers four account levels, ranging from free ones with 10 megabytes of storage to top-tier accounts with 150 megabytes costing $40 a year or $70 for two years. Only the upper level interested me because the others won’t work with personal domain names.

Though such an “enhanced” account might seem to have a hefty price tag, it’s a bargain for e-mail power users.

Worried about entrusting your e-mail to an outfit on the other side of the planet? I was until I learned that FastMail.FM’s e-mail servers are in New York and Texas (not surprising, since the bulk of the firm’s business is in the United States) as well as Norway.

If you’re looking to personalize your e-mail with a domain name attached to a working e-mail account, you can’t go wrong with GoDaddy.com as your domain-name registrar and FastMail.FM as your mail-account provider.

providers or move to the ends of the earth without suffering e-mail interruptions – assuming they’ll have online access where they’re going – or needing to tweak Internet settings such as MX records.

Most important, they give users full control over their e-mail identities. That’s priceless.