Steer well clear of the latest version of Windows Live Mail, the earlier versions are available if you want to stay with Microsoft, and they are not so bad (for your audience).
I use Thunderbird, it isn't the best, but there are plenty of people around using it in case you have questions.
Keep in mind that getting Windows Mail (like that shipped with Vista) is a bit of a PITA to get working in Win 7 64 bit. It can be don, but you need to tit about unhiding files, and swapping a DLL for a 64 bit version along with some registry hacking.
Yup, works well enough for me. Not perfect, but you can tune it up a bit to make it better.
Having been a dedicated user of Turnpike (Tripnuke to its faithful and gallant users) for many years I tried Thunderbird when it became clear that there was no chance of any further development of Tripnuke. I gave it a good trial but became frustrated by its limitations such as a decent killfile facility (things may have improved since then) and bought Forte Agent as being the nearest thing to Tripnuke. It was a bomb proof investment of usd 29.
[Note that while it's easy to transfer your e-mails from Outlook Express (and also from Demon's Turnpike), I don't think there's a way to transfer newsgroup posts. If there is, I'd appreciate the info.]
As downloaded and installed, you'll probably decide Thunderbird needs a couple of tweaks/fixes.
One of the tweaks you'll probably want to do is to add the ability to delete individual opened news posts (a simple change in the configuration file). It's strange that this isn't the norm.
Another tweak is if you don't like the non-standard 'vertical coloured bars' way of quoting text. It's OK, but I prefer the traditional '>' symbols. You'll need to add the 'QuoteColors' add-on - plus yet another simple change in the configuration file.
I use both Windoze Live Mail and XNews. I have news set up on my T-Bird, but I don't like the way it displays threads. Live Mail is quite close to the way OE worked for news reading. FWIW, I used to like OE's news client. It did what it said on the tin, and always worked well for me. Another up side is that it did my email as well, so only one program needed for both. I really mourned the loss of my OE when I switched to Windoze 7. Although T-Bird is ok for emails, I find that it has a lot of annoying little foibles like re-bolding headers for messages that have already been read, and putting up little windows with whole lists of emails that you have already read, because a new mail has come in on that address. I also don't really like the way that it 'learns' and junks mails at its own discretion. I dare say that some of this stuff can be switched off, but I really can't be fagged to spend hours searching about, trying to find out how. It's just a bit too 'nanny' for me really.
XNews is free, and is very straightforward to set up, including exclusions, message rules and killfiles. It runs as a quite small and self contained executable, so doesn't bolt itself deeply into your system. It presents threads in a friendly and useable way.
Worth a try, as it's easy to remove if you don't like it.
I was also quite happy with Outlook express. Currently my Win7 laptop has Outlook2003 for my emails and Thunderbird for newsgroups. It is far from ideal to put it mildy. However, I am told that you can download an extra for Win7 called XPmode (as long as it is not Win7Home - it has to be the better ones) and can then install Outlook express in that. I haven't tried it yet but I will get round to it because Thunderbird is so irritating despite initialy appearing similar to OE.
What's so irritating about Thunderbird? I've been using Demon's Turnpike for years, but I reckon that Thunderbird (suitably tweaked) is very similar, and perfectly acceptable.
If it's only news which is required, Gravity is another reasonable choice.
I downloaded Thunderbird and started the installation, but the corporate Anti-virus software Sophos blocked the install. I can get round this by disabling the A-V, but this prompted me to Google the paring. There are reported problems between Sophos and T'bird, so it may need further investigation. As this is a corporate PC I don't want to be installing and un-installing as the box needs to be ultra-stable.
In the past week or so there have been reported problems between Sophos and anything - including Sophos itself!
Mega issues because it identified many programs that had some form of updating capability as some form of virus or Trojan (ssh) and deleted them. Which included the Sophos updater. People now wondering how that got through testing...
I've been using Thunderbird for a bit (for email anyway), as I've moslty given up turnpike for email and have to say I'm finding it a bit annoying and irritaing to use.
Nothing major, but it always bugs a me a bit to use it
I've got Thunderbird (mail and some newsgroups) running alongside Turnpike. I'm really just playing with Thunderbird. It's somewhat prettier and more colourful than Turnpike, but I can't really see anything about it which 'bugs' me. I'd be quite happy to make it my 'official' mail/news client if I really had to (possibly when I'm forced to get a new PC, with a 'modern' versions of Windows).
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