Recommend e-mail client for new Windows 7 user

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Can anyone please advise me of a good email client to use with Windows 7.

I have just bought my wife her first PC. She’s used Outlook Express on various older PCs up to XP and ideally doesn’t want to change the way of working that she’s used to.

Any advice gratefully received. Thank you.

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I use Windows Live Mail, a part of the Windows Live Essentialssuite of apps. You only have to install any or all the apps. I had had very goo d success with it. It is somewhat different than Outlook Express, but you can add all you email accounts. I use my POP account from my ISP, Gmail and Hotmail in it and check all at once.

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Unfortunately Win7 does not like Outlook Exp and you cannot use it. I made the similar switch last year and looked all over for a work around for OE to no avail. I gave up and went to Windows Live as the other replier mentioned. It is not nearly as user friendly as OE. Be very careful to copy all your addresses and emails you want to keep from OE to a thumbdrive or similar in order to export to Win Live. The export will jumble everything up into a single folder requiring a resort into the various folders you are used to. Good luck.

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I personally use Outlook 2007 as my main email client and Windows Live mail 2011 for my junk emails (Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail). I use one of these Email adresses when I need to supply an Email address to get access to something on line or make purchases.

Here is a list of 11 free Windows Email clients you might want to look at: http://email.about.com/od/windowsemailclients/tp/free_email_prog.htm

Jerry

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With some tweaks, I have Windows Mail working just fine in Windows 7, 8 and 8.1.

But, I cannot get it working in Windows 10 Pro, Technical Preview (Beta). The tweaks for Windows 8.1, don’t work on Windows 10.

Windows live mail will work, once you download the Windows Live Essentials and Dot Net Framework 3.5.

However, Windows Live Mail is ten times harder to set up than OE. or Windows Mail. As I said, “it works in Windows 10” but it’s definitely NOT my favorite eMail Client.
It sort of looks like they took Windows Mail and Outlook and put them in a blender and what came out was Windows Live Mail.

I am, and will continue, to look for a way to get Windows Mail to work in Windows 10. Like previous versions of Windows, , , “Windows Mail” is there, in Program Files, but it just doesn’t work.

I will be forever grateful, to the person who can tell me how to Activate “Windows Mail” in Windows 10.

Cheers Mates!

The Doctor

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You can use Windows Mail in 7, it’s like the old OE…
I followed the instructions and have it working fine…

Look Here http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/5481-windows-mail.html

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I totally agree with Banyarola – I did the same – went to sevenforums and followed the instructions exactly and Windows Mail works great. Use the instructions on the FIRST page of the thread – the discussion goes on and on for many pages and becomes very confusing with people briniging up all sorts of things and talking about adding this and that to the tutorial. You can ignore ALL of that and use the instructions on the first page of the thread without worry. Just do NOT deviate from those instructions. Decide if you have 64 bit or 32 Bit Windows 7 and use the right steps that apply to your version of windows 7 (mine’s 64 bit). Go for it, and don’t look back. I dithered and dithered, trying and trying for months to be happy with Windows Llive Mail – 2009 on one machine and 2011 on the other, and each has drawbacks so that neither is satisfactory. Don’t do what I did and dither around, just go for Windows Mail and be happy. Windows Mail does exist on your windows 7 machine – it is just missing one .dll file which you will be able to download so you can get Windows Mail working. It is Outlook Express with a few very minor changes (it has a junk mail folder which you can enable or disable).

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kell, I use the junk folder but don’t download any new signature files for it because there could be problems using them with W7..

Actually, I’m still using thunderbird for my default but use Windows mail occasionaly..

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I have been using Thunderbird for about two and a half years now, since I started using Win7. I am still not totally satisfied with it.
Just saw ‘kelliann1’s reply and will try that.
If you got Microsoft Office, Outlook is a great mail server but too much for me, would love to get Outlook express back as it was simple and did all I wanted.

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I was an enthusiastic Eudora user throughout previous generations of Windows and, despite some discouragement from various web pages, have installed it on my Win 7 machine, and I find it works just as well for me as before. You can still download the last version (7.1, I think) before it became more like Thunderbird from http://www.eudora.com/download/. My only problem with it was finding where the mailboxes, and other user-account files were stored. Win 7 (even if you tell Eudora to store your files elsewhere on installation) stores them in C:Users[Username]AppDataRoamingQualcommEudora. Note that, in order to see the AppData folder, you have to set “Hidden Files and Folders” to “Show hidden files, folders and drives” under ToolsFolder OptionsView Tab in Windows Explorer.
Of course this version of Eudora is no longer supported, but I have found there are Forums which deal with any problems.

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I have been using Pegasus since Win 3.1 days and before and it has always worked well. I am now on win7 and have never had any migration problems.
http://www.pmail.com/

Try it.:)

Selwyn Mendelsohn

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Since the demise of my old XP machine last year I have been using Thunderbird without any problems. I have been able to set it up almost as a clone to OE, so that made the change over pretty easy. After reading Susan Bradley’s comment in issue 348 on the dropping of future updates to the program, I am a little disapointed and was wondering if there is a recommended email server which can run like OE or Thunderbird ie a look alike – I quite possitivley do not want to use MS Mail or any cloud based system. Help please.

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I used Pegasus as my very first email client back in the dark ages, and I liked it.
I didn’t know that Thunderbird was likely to be phased out, but it seems that the latest version of Eudora (Eudora OSE: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Eudora_OSE) is based on Thunderbird, so perhaps that might be a substitute for Thunderbird?

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I’ve been using Thunderbird forever and love it. I don’t care if they don’t enhance it for now, but who knows what the future might bring?

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It must be me but using any Microsoft email program will allow ActiveX code in an infected email to run. IMHO just a total NONO.

If the lady liked OE then Thunderbird is almost a given; it’s default screen layout is so much like OE that there shouldn’t be a question – IMHO.

I have literally many hundreds of customer folders, emails stored since 1998, a total of 1.13GB size of all the mail folders. It is fast, reactive and stable.

From customers that use it I hear only good things about Lightning, Thunderbird’s calendar extension.

Backup? One folder tree and you have it all, emails, address books, extensions, everything.

To the poster who remarked “I didn’t know that Thunderbird was likely to be phased out”:
You are mistaken, sorry. TB is being moved to “stable” state, that is there will be no further new functionality added.The original wording is along the lines of[INDENT][the leadership of the development team…] “has come to the conclusion that on-going stability is the most important thing, and that continued innovation in Thunderbird is not a priority for Mozilla’s product efforts”
[/INDENT]

WOW! Finally stability over feature mongering. More or less and with several name changes it’s the same since Netscape Mail appeared in Netscape Navigator somewhere around 1997, that was before Win98! But now Thunderbird is in a totally different world as far as stability is concerned. I wish it a long life!

If you want all your sensitive communications with customers, suppliers, stores, banks and CC companies and so on to be out there “in the cloud” then go for it.

But doesn’t the law require from us to be able to produce printed copy of emails if requested? How in the wold can you guarantee that for cloud storage over ten years? Across services that have in the past lost their customer’s emails? Anybody remember the Hotmail outage from way before yesteryear?

Sorry, my remark almost became a rant. Hush…

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For what it’s worth, I tried eM Client (free version, limited to 2 accounts, available here: http://www.emclient.com/) when I’d finally had it with Outlook. It imported everything flawlessly, and played very well with my gMail accounts. It’s simple to use, intuitive, and I love that it aggregates all my new mail in one folder.

I tried Thunderbird, and liked it a lot, but couldn’t make it work with my long list of gmail contacts, even though I mapped the fields, etc. repeatedly to import and tried every add-on that promised gmail contact synchronization. I still have it installed, just in case, but, for everyday use, the contact problem was a deal-breaker for me.

In the end, I bought eM Client and have not regretted it once. Their support, when I’ve requested it, has been prompt and very helpful.

Try it, you’ll like it.

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If you can use Eudora, by all means do. I used to have it but cannot any more because of ISP problems. For a while I used Hotmail under Thunderbird which worked fairly well but required more keystrokes than I would have liked. Then the computer I was using collapsed which meant that Thunderbird saved for me was gone but Hotmail saved it all in the cloud. On my computer I finally decided not to go back to Thunderbird, and I discovered that not only did Hotmail save my Email on its servers, but all the Email was saved to my hard drive by Windows Live. It was very fortunate that I did not renew Thunderbird because Mozilla has announced that Thunderbird will be terminated. Whom can you trust with your Email? Nobody. Fortunately I am not dependent on it, unlike a business.

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Thanks everyone for the suggestions:), I’ll have a look at them. I’ve been a bit busy round the house and garden so only just got back to the new PC problem.

I’ve heard that MS is dropping Windows Live Mail, moving it to Outlook, so I’m wondering how this should affect my decision.

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I personally just use Opera for my mail client. It’s a stand-alone browser and mail client. Supports IMAP accounts and you can have as many mail accounts as you want, using different services and supports both POP and IMAP services. I’ve used almost all of the different mail programs available for Windows 7 (both Windows versions and stand-alone e-mail programs…and have always come back to Opera. It takes just a bit of figuring out the basics to set up the account, but no different really than Outlook or any others do. In fact, some of the settings are automatic, just by saying what kind of account you are setting up for.

The other bonus is that it includes Newsreader and several other settings in the same easy to read fashion and any account checked also gives you a list in a “combined” inbox that you can check all messages (spam and other) without having to select between each account. Sending an e-mail is just as easy, by just selecting a drop-down box to which account you want to send the mail from.

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I’ve been using Thunderbird (& Eudora, Pegasus, Juno’s dial-up client, OE, Outlook, etc. before TB) from its inception & while there have been good versions & bad versions (as there are in many programs), the good far outweigh the bad, IMHO. I’m using TB to get email from 8 different accounts with multiple service providers. Just to set the record straight, TB is not being phased out (at least not in the foreseeable future, so Mozilla claims). Mozilla has decided to stop development of new features, but will continue to provide security updates & bug fixes. After all, what do you need in an email client except a program to retrieve your email so you can read it. Even if Mozilla eliminated TB, it would still work & the available extensions make TB very usable. I wholeheartedly recommend it. Just my 2 cents.

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Well, thank you all for the very prompt and interesting emails re Thunderbird. I was clearly wrong to think that being moved to “stable” state was the same as left to disappear into the sunset (like many other programs) and will continue to use it. In the meantime, I will have a look at some of the alternative suggestions.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions etc. Bob

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Thank you, Maddy.

It’s a while ago now and, yes, after trying some of the other suggested solutions, we did adopt Thunderbird. It is so similar in many ways to Outlook Express that my wife is very happy with it. And I can support her as required, too!

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There’s an OEClassic available that I’ve seen work on up to Win8.1 that may be of interest but doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of OE, may suit her needs.
http://www.oeclassic.com/

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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I got Hotmail set up in Win10TP’s Mail. This is a page I got when going to Settings, Accounts, Add an account and Other account [only EAS and IMAP listed there]. There’s several other choices.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/pop-email-accounts

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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