I guess, you could use Gmail,or thunderbird, or do a search on google, there are many of them out there. I stick with outlook express myself. Its got everything I need, and I like the fact that I can just minimize to the bottom and mail checks automatically every 2 minutes for me. I do have Thunderbird on another computer, and it does a good job too. Many on this forum, and other forums like the gmail. I havent tried that. Good Luck :-)Cat

Gmail can be easily configured to download in Outlook Express, which is what I do with my gmail accounts. I seldom go to the website to read or reply to my e-mails.

I did th google search and was overwhelmed by the choices, hence my post. My first surprise with this new 'puter was NO Outlook Express. I'm currently using webmail and do not like it! I thought perhaps there was another good option for use as my primary. Perhaps I'll just download OE, at least I'm familiar with using it. Thx for the input.

Sheila :)

Vista has replaced outlook express with what I think they call windows mail. I don't have vista so don't know how they compare. I use thunderbird and have all my email accounts including gmail and hotmail set up in it - you do need extensions to do this for hotmail. I visit my isp provided mail on their web site only to make sure they haven't put mail that I want in their junk folder. Then empty the junk.

fwiw
Windows Mail comes with Vista & looks to me to be very close to, if not exactly the same as, Outlook Express.

Vista does not give you a default desktop icon for Windows Mail but its under the Start/Programs list and you can easily add a desktop icon or add to the IE toolbar simple enough.

You can use it to view and send from most any email server that allows mail clients.

I use incredimail for years and love it, great for creative ppl...Free download

OK, I found Windows Mail and that will work for me. Also checked out incrdimail and it does look like lots of fun. Once I get set up with the pc card, I'll give it a try. Thx for the suggestions.

Sheila :)

For personal email, I am using an old copy of Netscape ver. 4.7. It's no good for browsing anymore because it does not support newer features and calls in the later versions of Windows, but it works great as an email utility. You can browse the internet with Internet Explorer and bring up Netscape when you need to access email. Both Netscape and IE will run simultaneously without interferring with each other. Just make sure that for the first time Netscape runs and the panel pops up, "do you want to make Netscape your default brouser", you answer, "No". IE will remain the default and Netscape will be secondary. You can start and stop Netscape at any time as needed while IE remains connected on-line.

I use IE to log into my ISP's mail server to read and manage my mail on the mail server, but when I want to download emails to my computer, I fire up Netscape to do this. In this way, I can purge my email of spam and any messages that I do not want to keep, then download only the "keepers".