It's called Windows Mail in Vista. Look in "all programs" after you hit start and click on it. You'll have to set it up with your new internet provider according to their instructions. I use Yahoo mail and Hotmail and Windows Mail, each serves a different audience when I communicate, one for friends, one for junk and Windows Mail as the default mail program in Vista (cause it won't let me use the others.) I have Vista Home Premium, so Pro may be a little different, but probably not too much. MSFT just came out with SP1 for Vista, so if you have all the right drivers, it will download as an update when you get online. All Vista is, is Win XP with a pretty dress on. As you learn it, you'll see. It's not really different at all, just better looking and things have new names to confuse us. The tutorial that comes with it is good as is the info at the link below. Also, when you get your internet connection, just put any questions you have into a google search and you'll get all the help you need. Here is a link that might be useful: Microsoft Vista Site

OK everyone, get up off the floor. Yes, it is really me. I have been waiting to return from sabbatical and this thread may be the best reason to return. Now hang on to your seats. I finally entered the 21st century by replacing my old 400mhz HP Win98 OE with a new dual core HP with Vista Home Premium. My experince is almost identical to Bob's. Updated favorite applications and replaced some very outdated hardware. Didn't skimp on the memory as I went two gigs. In two months I have only had two concerns. One was with the trial version of Symantec Internet Security System following a lengthy update. I ended up deleting the application, another saga for another time, and installing AVG. The other was when I broke my own rule, "never install more than two O/S updates at once" as I downloaded six at once. System restore came to the rescue and after following my rule all is well. It amazes me how many diagnostic utilities that are available. Having much experience with Win2000 and XP at work, I still find Vista an improvement and give it a thumbs up. As far as any sound concern, there are many places to control sound in Vista, particularly if you have Real Tek Audio Manager. Perhaps some users have adjusted what they thought were independent settings when in reality they are not independent Hello to everyone. DA

There's nothing wrong with Vista and I think you should look a little deeper for your problem. I went with my girlfriend last week and she purchased a Toshiba Satellite laptop with Vista Home Basic Edition, 2GB RAM, 200GB Hard drive. First thing I did was remove Norton 360 through control panal/uninstall and then install AVG Anti-Virus. She wanted Photoshop installed, no problem. Next was Microsoft Office 2007, started installing and bam computer shuts down completely. I think heat, you know that they are always warm on the bottom, but no as long as there is a little clearance on the bottom for air, they'll run for hours and days on end. Decided to uninstall the trial of the preinstalled Student Microsoft Office thinking there was a conflict with the Pro version I was trying to install, went to control panel/uninstall and tried to remove the student version, bam again computer shuts down completely. Did a search on the internet for vista shuts down and the best info I could find was that it's programs running in the background causing conflicts. I remembered the Norton Removal Tool and downloaded, ran and removed all traces. Went to msconfig and took a look at the programs running at startup and thus running in the background, installed CCleaner ccsetup209_slim.exe, my preferred tool (Tools/Startup) for disabling startup and unnecessary programs from running in the background. After that Microsoft Office installed perfect and the machine has never shutdown again. Next time I have the laptop, all the bundled software is coming off, who needs it. So what I'm saying is that there is a conflict with a program that's running in the background and whatever you're doing at the time the machine shuts down. Duel boot is fine, you'll need an XP disk, $100 or less. Make a separate partition to install it on. Really very simple, less than an hour if you know what your doing. With a duel boot, you're given the choice or either booting into XP or Vista or set one as the default. I have both, doesn't matter which I use, both perform equally. First thing I'd do is remove all the bundled software that came with the machine that you don't need, especially Norton that comes preinstalled with the Toshiba Satellite and get a good Anti-Virus program. You should also have Vista Service Pack 1 installed by now.

PM2 - I just want to clarify that the reason my husband may not be able to get XP drivers for his laptop is not because Microsoft is not supporting XP. They continue to support XP and constantly issue new updates. The issue is that there might not be XP drivers that are compatible with other things in his laptop. Now I don't know enough to know what those things are - is it hardware on the laptop, other software they've installed that doesn't have XP drivers. I don't fully comprehend the problem, but it's not that Microsoft isn't supporting XP. I hope somebody more knowledgeable will correct me if I'm wrong. I don't want to give prairiemoon2 incorrect information. I share your frustration that Microsoft would issue software that is so problematic that they even write documentation on ways to deal with the problems. I'm also frustrated when I have to get software fixes from other companies to deal with Microsoft problems. (I just had lots of trouble updating XP on an old computer of my daughters. The updates would not install - and nothing on Microsoft site - or from my computer tech guy's discussions with Microsoft turned up a solution. The solution came from third-party software - recommended to me here on this forum.) Lynn.