OT Windows 7 and Email Client

This is a bit OT but I know that there are people here with experience of PCs and usually very helpful.

My old XP PC is starting to play up and I'm planning on replacing it in the next few weeks. Currently looking at machines from the Chillblast range as they seem to get consistently good reports. A couple of areas where I'd appreciate and views and/or recommendations:

Version of W7. Most of the systems I'm looking at come with Windows Home Premium, but with a cost option to have Windows Professional. Win Prof has XP compatibility, which I might/will need for some older programs I use which aren't (and may never be) compatible with W7. There doesn't seem to be any other advantage to me for Win Prof, but someone may think differently?

Mail client. I currently use Outlook Express, which isn't available on W7, so I need an alternative. Outlook is a possible alternative but has many features I'll never use (and will cost). Windows Live mail may do the job but I played with early versions and wasn't impressed with it's reliability - it may be ok now.

Mandatory requirements are: support POP/SMTP and IMAP from multiple email providers; allow two or more email accounts for different users of PC with privacy; allow downloaded email to be left on the providers server (where supported eg Hotmail), allow at least basic filtering to direct incoming mail to different folder, support dlists or address groups.

Desire able: allow import of old emails from OE (the wife and I have quite a lot of emails that we need to retain and have access to; allow import of addresses from OE address book.

Any advice gratefully received (but I'm not going the Unix route, so please don't waste your time suggesting this option, though I know that some prefer it!).

Reply to
DavidM
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just use teh full mozilla suite of firefox and thunderbird on any platform you care to install.

And you know already but have rejected what the best one would be..

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I swapped last year from XP to Windows 7 and had to go down the Pro root to run some programmes. It is a bit of a pain with printers and devices as it runs in the Windows virtual machine but it does work after some effort. I use Windows Live and imported my O.E. mails and stuff without a problem.

Peter

Reply to
PAJ

Given what you have said, my advice would be get a powerful PC, install

*nix, install VMBox. Install XP to a virtual machine, and just run the virtual machine.
Reply to
Jethro_uk

I've got a dual boot (Win7/XP) machine, mainly because my scanner doesn't have Win7 drivers. My overall impression after 6 months or so is that Win7 is bloody awful, and what they've done to Office 2007 is worse still. I thought I'd get used to it all but I haven't

Reply to
stuart noble

Thunderbird.

Reply to
Tim Watts

I'm happy enough with Win7 after XP - but then I don't use OE or IE or MS Office.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

The "XP Mode" is just a virtual machine session albeit with a little more intergration into the host W7 OS. And you don't pay extra for the XP licence. To be honest I wouldn't bother just for an OE6 replacement, Live Mail IS crap but there is always Thunderbird, I use that for mail but prefer Agent for groups.

Reply to
Graham.

In article , DavidM scribeth thus

What's up with it?, if its all failing then you could get a younger one and re install XP which is a decent programme:)..

I've used WIN 7 Pro and all in its quite good. There are a few things what you might want to customise or turn off, but you can get it looking a bit like XP if required;)..

All in Thunderbird is good and free..

Yes does all of those.. You can of course download it on your present machine and run it and see what you think.

Well it does too work fine but if thats your view then fine too;)..

Reply to
tony sayer

Pro gets you the legit license for the virtual machine... that's the main gain from a home users perspective.

It also does not do news.

Thunderbird will do all that.

and that

Reply to
John Rumm

or just install XP on the new machine and cut out the middle man?

(seems to be adding complexity for no gain in functionality)

Reply to
John Rumm

----------------------- Windows Live Mail handled Newsgroups OK when I used it with W7, but I eventually binned it and went to Thunderbird because WLM twice deleted some of itself when applying updates. What made it worse was that it obviously left some corrupted files as I couldn't delete it or reinstall it and ended up having to reload the system (from a backup, thankfully!) Thunderbird has improved immensely from when I last tried it some years ago and will do everything the OP wants.

John M

Reply to
John Miller

OE was replaced by WLM years ago. There have been no security updates to OE since. WLM has been fixed and works just like OE for mail. The latest version of WLM doesn't work well with usenet so don't go later than V14 (IIRC) if you are using it for usenet.

You download WLM from

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Microsoft site) for free.

Reply to
dennis

IIRC the older versions did do usenet, but the current one does not I am led to believe.

Reply to
John Rumm

Thunderbird

Reply to
F

Thanks to all who have replied so far.

I use Forte as my news reader, so don't need the email client for that. The XP on my current machine came pre installed and I don't have a full installation disc to do an install on a new machine. And I am NOT going the *nix route!

I do have a few other programs that are not W7 compatible, so looks like I need W7 Prof, and either WLM or Thunderbird for mail. Think I'll install Thunderbird on my laptop and have a play with it to see what it's like.

Reply to
DavidM

It's much quicker to roll back a virtual machine than it is revert to a saved image. And if you intend using XP as your main OS, you should be prepared to revert to original install every 3 months or so.

Reply to
Jethro_uk

I was searching for a suitable response to that, but the only thing that comes to mind is bollocks!

Reply to
John Rumm

You are right: its something like 6 weeks

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Opera will do all this, it's a fine browser too, faster and more feature complete than Chrome, and without the bloat of Firefox, and free. The best of all worlds.

Opera have always been very "pro web standards" and that used to hurt them, when websites used to just code for IE. Both Chrome and Opera (and to a lesser degree Firefox) adhere to web standards too, Opera is no longer at a disadvantage that it used to be.

Their soon to be released Opera 12 is looking REALLY good and well worth checking out. The mail client is a "views" based, rather than more simplistic but limiting folder based. For example, you can tag family holiday emails in both "Family" and "Holiday" views without duplication, something folders don't allow. Oh, and it's also a newsgroup reader and IRC client too, along with a RSS reader. And only a 10MB download (1/3rd the size of the browser-only Chrome)

Browser:

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Reply to
MarkG

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