I just spend about 2 weeks on the road staying in various hotels. All of the hotels now have some kind of Internet access, but you never know how safe it is. When you use products like Yahoo Mail your login info is encrypted, but your entire session is not. Gmail solves this problem and does it well. Simply point your browser to:
https://mail.google.com/mail/
Your entire session including the reading of emails will be encrypted, and safe from prying eyes.