My dh explained that unlike our home account, when our service was interrupted comcast did not save emails... they bounced them back (whcih frustrated some of my friends, and us!!)
Gmail will save the emails, and you can access them, like yahoo, and unlike yahoo you get lots more space (I'm computer illiterate so forgive the ignorance of my post-- he also mentioned since this is a new service, its still in 'trial' periods, and its something called Beta testing...