Email programs.....

[Ken Fitzgerald]

My wife and I are considering buying a laptop for a family member.

Whenever I buy a computer, it's always got Windows and it has come with Outlook or the other free Windows version.

If you don't buy Office or Outlook, are there other free email programs that are available? The individual we are buying this for is financially challenged.......hard working....contributing member of society but financially challenged.

Are there free email programs available?

Thanks!

[David Freed]

I use g-mail and am happy with it. My daughter used g-mail for a while, then switched to yahoo and likes it better.

[Scott Shepherd]

Thunderbird is free and from the people that brought the Firefox browser. I've used it for years now and I find it to be outstanding.

[Stew Hagerty]

MSN is very good and it's free for me with my ISP as is Verizon's mail. I'm not sure if MSN is free otherwise or not. It's my understanding that most ISP's have an e-mail package that goes with their service. If not, I know that Yahoo is free and relatively easy to use.

[paul cottingham]

Thunderbird is free and from the people that brought the Firefox browser. I've used it for years now and I find it to be outstanding.
+1 for thunderbird. doesn't trigger viruses and can be trained to filter spam.

[Todd Willhoit]

Windows Live Mail is free and works well if they use Hotmail or another POP3 or IMAP provider. Here is some info:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/So-long-Outlook-Express-Introducing-Windows-Live-Mail

Download here:
http://download.live.com/wlmail

Todd

[Tim Boger]

My wife and I are considering buying a laptop for a family member.

Whenever I buy a computer, it's always got Windows and it has come with Outlook or the other free Windows version.

If you don't buy Office or Outlook, are there other free email programs that are available? The individual we are buying this for is financially challenged.......hard working....contributing member of society but financially challenged.

Are there free email programs available?

Thanks!


Gmail is a great choice, it's free and web based so you can easily check it from any computer. Also allows quite large email files to be sent.

Oh ya ... it's free from google.

[Scott Shepherd]

You can setup Thunderbird to work with gmail. Thunderbird will be like outlook, it will let you have all your email on your machine. MSN, Yahoo, GMail, AOL, all of those will require you to log in to the internet to read old mail or send mail.

Two different things. You can setup Thunderbird to work with most any of the free email services.

[Jim Rimmer]

I don't know that it is an "email program" but my son who is career Navy set up his family account on yahoo (NAME@yahoo.com (NAME@yahoo.com)) so he wouldn't have to change his address every time he moved and got a new ISP. That was 12 - 13 years ago and he is still using it.

[Jim Becker]

Win7 does not come with an email client outside of the Windows Live version. The Professor and I both use Mozilla Thunderbird and have for years.

[Neal Clayton]

agree on thunderbird, been using it for about 5-6 years now? since it was version 1.0 at least.

[Jim O'Dell]

Another happy Thunderbird user. Very easy to use. But then I learned on Netscape originally, and this is basically another version of the Mozilla software, just done by other people, or so I understand. Could be wrong. Jim.

[Tim Lawson]

I was a Thunderbird user for many years and have just given up (partly in frustration). I was using it to access my gmail account and two other email accounts. I've switched to using gmail though a browser.

Many reasons:

I've recently acquired a netbook for out of the house usage. I see the same view of my mail regardless of using the PC or netbook where ever I am (wifi hotspots etc).
I have a single address book that can be reused by other Google applications - Google Voice being the most interesting for transcribing voice mail to email,giving me a single phone number and making low cost international calls from my mobile phone.
All my mail is is in the cloud - both PCs can burn and I don't lose a thing.
Another major reason -trying to search mail in Thunderbird is slow and not very good. Google uses their search technology to find stuff fast and it's good - I have a much easier time finding old mail now.
I can channel all my mail through Google Mail and build up that on-line archive.
Google's spam filtering is very close to 100%
Reduces the footprint on my PC - Thunderbird archives are large and without regular management of your Thunderbird inbox performance slows.
Word of warning to Thunderbird users - I deleted one of my accounts in Thunderbird as I was switching over to use gmail and it deleted 3 years worth of email for me without a warning or the ability to cancel the operation. Not good!
Am I concerned about privacy and Google? No - whatever you do on the web leaves traces. If Google isn't tracking you then somebody else is. Google is dealing with so many individuals that they can only handle your usage data in an automated / aggregated way.


I must sound like a Google bigot but it has been incredibly liberating to get away from an email client.

Good luck in your hunt

Tim

[Bryan Morgan]

Chalk up another one for Gmail/Google Apps. You can access it from anywhere and it "just works". If your computer blows up you don't lose your email... We use Outlook, Thunderbird, and Eudora at work. They are what they are... I think the days of the desktop email client are numbered.

[glenn bradley]

+1 on Thunderbird.

[Scott Shepherd]

Another major reason -trying to search mail in Thunderbird is slow and not very good. Google uses their search technology to find stuff fast and it's good - I have a much easier time finding old mail now.



I haven't seen that issue. I have over 9,000 emails in Thunderbird, every email from the day I started this business. Every file that wasn't spam is saved and I use that information on a daily basis using search. I've never had any issues with search being slow or not being able to find something.

[Bryan Morgan]

I haven't seen that issue. I have over 9,000 emails in Thunderbird, every email from the day I started this business. Every file that wasn't spam is saved and I use that information on a daily basis using search. I've never had any issues with search being slow or not being able to find something.


Keep in mind Thunderbird has limitations and will blow up eventually... make sure and back up all your stuff. Our company does a LOT of business through email... the guys with Thunderbird and Outlook always fill it up and they blow up...

[David G Baker]

Ken,
I have been using Yahoo for years and haven't had any problems with it since I started using it. I travel on occasion and I can get my E-mail at any location that has an ISP available. I store a lot of things on Yahoo that I do not want to loose if my computer crashes. I pay for the extra storage so there is a lot of available space for family photos etc.
At one time I used Outlook and Outlook Express but had frequent problems with them so I dumped them even though I really liked the accessories available.

[John Coloccia]

+1 Thunderbird. I don't know what the whole "blow up" thing is all about. I've used it until recently (I'm switched to Macs now), with tens of thousands of emails and it's been flawless from day one.

[Jerome Stanek]

I use thunderbird, Gmail, and hotmail they all work very well

[Curt Harms]

That way you can use either a web interface or email client. There is a setting under "account settings"-"server settings" check the "leave on server until I delete them" option. One caution with that-after installing or reinstalling, don't let Thunderbird check your email until you set that option. The default is to download messages from the email server then delete them on the server.

[Don Wurscher]

If you want an e-mail program with a little pazazz (sp) take a look at
Incredimail, the basic is free and has all kinds of what they call emoticons.

[Anthony Scira]

Google runs my life.........
+1 For Gmail and all the other things they offer for free.......

[Bryan Morgan]

+1 Thunderbird. I don't know what the whole "blow up" thing is all about. I've used it until recently (I'm switched to Macs now), with tens of thousands of emails and it's been flawless from day one.

They have file size limitations and inevitably these programs just nuke themselves. A corrupt email, improper shutdown, memory leaks, etc... I see it all the time in my day job. We are trying to move everyone over to Google Apps but most are reluctant to learn something new.

[John Coloccia]

T-Bird has a 4GB file size limit but you can always create another folder. Thunderbird DID have some bugs which have been fixed in later versions, notably some bugs that reduced the limit to 2GB, and also some that allowed you to exceed their 4GB limit.

I don't doubt your experience with Thunderbird, but you mentioned file size limits and there they are.