Rants and Raves

I’m going to focus on Microsoft Email Readers… if you want to use Thunderbird it’s fine; but since Microsoft current has FOUR different email programs for the PC (they also have Entourage for the Mac — but that doesn’t run on any flavor of Windows).

• Outlook
• Outlook Express
• Windows Mail
• Windows Live Mail

Outlook – comes in Office, and it’s a _very_ heavy weight email program.  If all you want to do is read email, this probably isn’t the program for you.  If you want to manager your calendar and your contact as well as email in one program, this would be a good choice.

Personally I tend to only use Outlook to maintain my address book and calendar; mainly because it’s what sync’s my cell phones.  I’ve always found it an horrendously complex email program — and then it trys and hides many of the things in email I want to use!

Outlook Express – I used this with Windows XP, and felt it was an adequate email program.  I actually handled IMAP better than any other client around at the time.  Both Thunderbird and iMail (on the Mac) had issues with very large IMAP stores.

If all you want to do is manage your email, it’s a good choice if you’re running on XP (or an older Windows).

Windows Mail – With Vista Microsoft quietly introduced a new email program.  Well, actually it’s pretty much the same email program as Outlook Express, with only a few improvements.

Again, if all you want to do is manage your email, it’s a good choice if you’re runnin gon Vista.

Windows Live Mail – Microsoft has also been working on developing a new email reader, and they’ve bundled it with their Live services.  You can download it for free (even if you don’t use Live).

This is a very feature full email program.  It will do IMAP and POP3 (so you can use it with your ISP or with GMail)… fully supports SSL & TLS, supports accessing Live Mail directly (that would be MSN, HotMail, and Live).  It will function as a NNTP (that’s News) reader, and as an RSS (that’s Really Simple Syndication) reader.

It stores contacts each in individual XML files (.contacts)… can import accounts from other Microsoft email programs.

It really has a number of nice features, and it’s a reasonably stable program; however, it’s more like a first generation release, so it does have some minor annoyances.

At the moment I’m trying to use Windows Live Mail on all my computers… just because that’s where we’re headed, and it works fairly well (and I do have some old MSN / HotMail / Live accounts it gives me direct access to).

One word of caution… if you decide to try out Windows Live Mail; only install the Live components you need (you can go back and add more later), and watch for the options where it wants to change your system defaults.

Related posts:

• Windows Mail (Vista) Microsoft has several generations and families of email programs. Outlook is targeted for the corporate market, and until recently the only viable choice for Windows...
• Windows Live Microsoft introduced it’s next generation online services quit some time ago under the name Windows Live through the URL live.com. It’s intended as far more...
• Windows Live Mail Part of the Microsoft Live Essential software suite available either from Live.com (see link below) or through the Microsoft Update is Live Mail; a simple,...
• Microsoft Live Essentials With Windows 7 Microsoft has removed email, instant messaging, address book, calendaring,  and movie maker from the Windows install.  If you run the Windows 7 Upgrade...
• Windows Live Mail Failings and Features Since I’ve given Windows Live Mail a “recommendation” I do want to be clear about about some of the specifics. First, when you move a...
• Remove Outlook Express If you run an older version of Microsoft Windows (Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 for instance) and you don’t use Outlook Express, or you’ve...
• Null SMTP Server For some time now I’ve wanted an efficient way to be able to send myself rich email without having to waste a lot of bandwidth;...
• IMAP Utilities I generally prefer to interface to my mail via IMAP, and I store my mail archives in a local IMAP repository (which allows me the...
• Free Hosted Email If you have your own domain and you really don’t need web hosting you might want to consider hosted email servers from Microsoft or Google....
• Windows 7 – Device Stage Microsoft® Windows™ 7 has a really cool feature called Device Stage. It presents all your hardware devices together in one place and allows you to...

Tags: Communications, Computers, Email, Technology, Windows //