At 10:26 p.m. on Jan. 17, less than three days before he was sworn in as president, George W. Bush sent a group e-mail message to 42 ''dear friends'' and family members, telling them his new job would preclude continuing to correspond in cyberspace.

''My lawyers tell me that all correspondence by e-mail is subject to open record requests,'' Mr. Bush wrote to the group, which included top aides and business people. ''Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not to correspond in cyberspace. This saddens me. I have enjoyed conversing with each of you.''

Until that moment, when Mr. Bush wrote that ''sadly I sign off,'' he kept in contact with these people through often daily e-mail messages, which he would usually dash off early in the morning before embarking on the campaign trail. (The missives were generally to the point -- a sentence or so. Mr. Bush preferred all lower-case letters and little punctuation except dashes between thoughts, and would usually sign off, simply, ''gwb.'')

While Al Gore was known as the computer wonk in the campaign, his palmtop organizer hanging from his belt, Mr. Bush was also an avid user of e-mail. The list of those he corresponded with most regularly on a laptop offers a glimpse into his private universe. The roster of names was obtained by The New York Times from people on the list. It ranges from Mr. Bush's mother, Barbara, to the golfer Ben Crenshaw, to Patrick Oxford, a Houston lawyer who has known the president for three decades, to Texas oil executives like Edward Shaw.