I’ve been using Xfinity from Comcast as my email program ever since losing my beloved Outlook Express upon upgrading from Windows XP to windows 7.
To me, this Xfinity seems to be a rather unsatisfactory program - it’s very slow in opening, doesn’t handle hyperlinks too well, and in general I’m dissatisfied with it and would like a different one. However, in searching thru the Internet there seem to be about six jillion of these programs out there, all of which claim to be super wonderful.
My question - what do you dopers use, and are you satisfied with what you have? Any advice and counsel on this would be much appreciated as I would really like to get rid of the Comcast one.
We use Thunderbird, but my wife has been grumbling about it lately being a resource hog. She doesn’t leave it up because it checks for new email every five minutes, and also whenever she wakes her laptop up from sleeping. We both are using Windows 7, and I don’t have an issue, but her laptop is older.
Would Windows Essentials Mail be any better? Any advice on making either of them less resource intensive? (I’ve already suggested she change her time between checking for new email to maybe an hour, but that won’t help when she wakes the laptop.)
I’m not sure about checking mail when waking but she can set the interval at which it fetches to any time frame she wants or even ‘none’ so it only checks when she hits the “Get Mail” button.
ETA, there’s a button that says ‘Check for new mail at startup’. Unchecking that might get it to stop checking mail when she wakes up her computer.
OTOH, if you’re not using it for work and don’t need you’re mail right this second, you really don’t need it always up anyways. On top of that, if her phone makes a noise when she gets mail she can just pull up Thunderbird then.
I think this thread is on two different tracks. Gmail, Yahoo etc is totally different from an email client like Thunderbird or what the OP is trying to replace, Outlook Express. An email client is just used for checking email, it’s not an email address or email service in and off itself, simply a way to fetch your email. In fact, Outlook Express or Thunderbird (and I’ll recommend K9 for a phone) can grab your Gmail and Yahoo mail and most other cloud (or otherwise) based emails and bring them all back to one program for you so you don’t have to go and check them all the time.
Having said that someone here is confused about the difference between a client and an email service and I’m honestly not sure if it’s the OP or some of the posters. I only say that because the OP is asking to something to replace Outlook Express with and people are suggesting Gmail and Yahoo. To me, at least, that doesn’t make sense. IMO That’s like asking for advice on which cell phone to get (Hey guys, should I get a Motoroloa Ultra or a Samsung Note?) and having someone respond with “Verizon”.
OP asked what e-mail software people were using. My answer is that most people don’t even use e-mail “software” anymore, we use cloud-based e-mail services instead.
It’s like someone asking which pager to get; I’d indeed answer “get a cell phone instead, like Verizon.”
Gmail can fetch any mail that’s on a pop or smtp server. If you like the interface, there’s no reason you couldn’t use Gmail to access just about any email.
