Pick a new mail client for me

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve just moved from XP to Vista and I have eight years of emails from Outlook express backed up which “Windows Mail” won’t import.

Given how much I prefer Firefox to IE I wondered if it might be time to get a 3rd party mail program too.

(Anyone suggesting to uninstall Vista will get one of these: :rolleyes: . I’m giving Vista a fair trial)

Thunderbird is the obvious choice, but I know nothing about what’s out there. So I thought 'd ask y’all for recommendations.

Being able to import the old Outlook express data would be a major plus.
Also I run three different email accounts so any features which help me organise them would be great too.

thanks.

2

I use Pocomail. It works for me. I have a mailbase of over 300K messages.

3

Given how you prefer Firefox, Thunderbird is even more of a natural choice (the extension managment, update methodology, design and layout philosphy, etc. is similar) - I switched from Outlook a couple of years ago and have never looked back.

4

I use Thunderbird at home and it does the job. It will do a lot more than I use it for but it’s good as a basic Email client too.

5

Another vote for Thunderbird - with the Lightning add-on for calendar functions.

6

I like Opera’s mail client, but that comes attached to the Opera browser (which is also great), so it might not work for you.

7

I’ve given Vista a trial, but not by choice. I’m forced to use it because I can’t get XP drivers for my hardware. It’s a piece of shit.

Having said that, I highly recommend Seamonkey . It’s an integrated browser and mail client. In effect, it’s what Netscape should have grown up to be.

8

Maybe future posters can describe in a little more detail the advantages of these clients. I still use AOL because the mail is so easy to use, search, store, edit, etc. At the university that I work at there’s a mail system called Novel that is absolutely crap. I don’t know if that is an actual mail client or a program that the university uses, but stand clear of that one if you have a choice.

9

Some advantages of Pocomail:

[ul][li]uses standard MBX format, [/li][li]support for multiple mail accounts, [/li][li]allows change the sending field (important when you own your own domain), [/li][li]can handle mailbases with hundreds of thousands of files, [/li][li]it’s not Outlook, [/li][li]very easy to use, [/li][li]inbuilt backup feature, [/li][li]intelligent spam filter, [/li]good filtering (critically important for me. Not quite as good as PMMail, though)[/ul]

10

There are some great reviews of these and other mail clients here:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-email-client.htm

(FYI, Yes, I am the editor for that category at techsupportalert.com. :slight_smile: )