Arggh!

The quest to make my home PC into the computer equivalent of the six-million-dollar man - better; stronger; faster - has hit a major snag that I’ve been so far unable to resolve.

Windows 7 doesn’t bloody well come with an email client! Can you believe that?

Nope, Microsoft has dropped my beloved Outlook Express from it’s latest OS. Instead, they want you to use the full-blown Outlook, which comes as part of their latest Office suite at a cost of 4 zillion quid. Bastards.

So, what are my options? Well, there are plenty of very capable free clients out there. But, I have to find one that will work under 7 running in 64bit mode.

Two such contenders are the much vaunted Mozilla Thunderbird and the much respected Pegasus Mail. I tried both.

Thunderbird’s connection wizard scanned my settings and gave me an IMAP mailbox instead of the POP3 one that I require. I don’t seem to be able to change it. It also won’t import my old OE files that I spent ages getting off the old drive.

Pegasus seemed to work perfectly though and did everything I asked of it.  But… I just don’t like it.

There is a third option: apparently Windows Mail (part of Vista) will run under 7. I quite like Windows Mail and use it regularly as I have Vista on my laptop.

The question is: can I get it off the laptop and on to the desktop, without fucking up either, or both, machines?

If it all goes quiet round here for a while, you’ll know what’s happened.