There is only one email program
There is only one email program for Windows users. No, I haven't lost my mind, and yes Windows users can chose from many client side email programs. But this is a Defensive Computing blog and speaking defensively, that is, with the hope of avoiding problems in the future, there is only one choice when it comes to email programs (webmail is another topic entirely - if you use webmail exclusively you can stop reading here).
Outlook
Outlook is out because it stores all your email in a single file. You don't need to be a techie/nerd to know how dangerous it is to have all your eggs in one basket. A single bad hard disk sector will suck up your time, money and/or email. And because the basket can get very large, backing it up is a pain. Not to mention it's expensive (OK, I did mention it).
Outlook Express
Outlook Express starts with two big advantages, it's free and pre-installed in Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows. And it stores each folder as a
separate file, avoiding the
big Outlook design flaw. I never liked it, in part because it
uses Internet Explorer to display HTML formatted email and thus inherits the
security problems of IE. But don't rule it out for this reason alone.
A few days ago, Leo Notenboom wrote that Outlook Express is dead. At his
Ask-Leo website someone asked about un-installing and re-installing Outlook Express, a classic tactic for
a problematic application. No can do. Quoting Leo: "With the introduction of
Internet Explorer 7, Outlook Express has apparently been put out to
pasture, at least if you're on Windows XP."
There never was a standalone download of Outlook Express, it was
always married to IE5 and IE6. When you updated Internet Explorer, you
also updated Outlook Express, like it or not. With the
introduction of IE7, Outlook Express was thrown overboard,
it's no longer included with the browser.
Thus, if you're currently using Outlook Express on Windows XP, or an earlier version
of Windows, you'd better hope it doesn't start acting up. Leo
describes a number of ways to try and fix a broken copy of Outlook
Express, but none are mainstream operations (I suggest reading the article to see
if the fixes are things you're comfortable doing). And his suggested
fixes are all Windows things, not Outlook Express things. In my opinion, you're better off using an email program that is not an integral part of the operating system.
Windows Mail
Windows Mail is the replacement for Outlook Express in Vista (it only runs in Vista). According to Leo, there is no stand-alone download of Windows Mail, so it too can't be easily un-installed and re-installed and is, perhaps, too much a part of the operating system. Also, it's new and thus likely to be buggy.
Windows Live Mail
Leo Notenboom updated his posting September 1st to include Windows Live Mail, an email program that neither he nor I was aware of. It's a new version of Outlook Express that runs on both Vista and XP with Service Pack 2.
First off, I can't believe the name. Microsoft learned nothing from the confusion they caused non-techies by similarly naming two totally different email programs (Outlook and Outlook Express). My guess is that it will eventually be referred to as Live Mail, both because the "Windows" is superfluous and to help differentiate it from the Vista-only program (which they should have called Vista Mail).
Whatever it's name, the software is in beta, so the jury is still out. Except, that is, when choosing defensively. Beta software is out of the question when it comes to applications that really matter to you.
Thunderbird
I recommend Thunderbird from Mozilla, the same organization
behind
Firefox. According to Leo Notenboom "Thunderbird is free,
fairly similar to OE to use, and actually somewhat more powerful. It's
free, downloadable, it's being updated, works on Windows XP and Vista
as well as the
Mac and Linux, and there are many add-ons available for it."
To this I'll add that Thunderbird, like
Firefox, is very good about updating itself with bug fixes. Keeping
your applications up to date is a great defense against malicious
software. And since Thunderbird does not use Internet Explorer under
the covers to display HTML formatted email, it's safer still.
The
safety provided by Thunderbird comes at virtually no cost. Not only is
the software free, but it's easy to use. I say that not based on my own
use of the program but based on the reaction of many of my non-techie
clients.
You can download Thunderbird from Mozilla or from download.com where the Editor's review gave it 5 stars (out of 5) and where 511 users (as of September 1, 2007) rated it 4.5 stars.
Eudora
Eudora is liked by many techies but it's in transition and thus I'd
be wary of trusting it with my email. The official website says "The Paid mode commercial versions of Eudora are no longer available as of May 1st, 2007. The Sponsored mode versions of Eudora continue to be
available for download. An open source version of Eudora? is being developed by Mozilla and will be free of charge."
To translate, "sponsored mode" refers to a free ad-supported version. While free is good, abandoned is not. The new open source version of Eudora is called Penelope and the first beta was released August 31, 2007. Any brand new software is likely to be buggy for a while. I'll pass.
Lotus Notes
Perhaps the most hated email program to ever walk the face of the earth.
Updated September 1, 2007: Added Lotus Notes, Windows Live Mail, link to download.com for Thunderbird and Penelope.
Michael Horowitz is an independent computer consultant and the author of several classes on Defensive Computing. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. 
His two complaints: 1) It's expensive: $100 if you get it by itself (Amazon has it for $88 right now). True, it's not cheap. Get it with Office, and you're at around $200 (or more). Okay, not cheap. That's true.
The other complaint about it being in one file is also a reasonable gripe. My Outlook PST is pushing 3 gigabytes in size (!). My own fault, really, I never throw anything away (including all my C-Net newsletters that I never have time to read).
However, as in his recent post about "Backing up your E-mail Program", that's the key. Back it up. Heck, all your pictures, music, documents, etc. all need to be backed up, just like your e-mail.
So, if you can afford it, and remember to back it up, Office seems to be a very good choice.
I may check out Thunderbird based on your recommendation, but your recommendation seems to be based more on the fact that it's free, and like Outlook, easy to use. Firefox is free, but it doesn't work on many websites, unlike Internet Explorer 7 which incorporates many of Firefox's features, and works with nearly every website.
Walt D in LV
I love thunderbird, but I guess thunderbird is not the way "to avoid problems in future".
It's only true if the following two are all applicable to you :
1. you will never buy anything that require extra feature than your mail, or if you buy them, you don?t care about making it synchronized with your pc. Take a smartphone for example, if its windows mobile based, and if you want it to integrate well out of the box, then you have no luck with thunderbird. But with outlook, you can sync your calendars, contacts etc.
2. you will never swap your email client. Thunderbird has no export functionality, and if you google around on how to migrate data from thunderbird to outlook, you will find out that the advertised methods in thunderbird's website are just not going to work, and there is no easy way to migrate it. While if you are using outlook, you will be able to migrate your data easily to almost any email clients exist.
However I agree that Thunderbird is cheap (free) and very user friendly. And I found it fast as well. But its surely a way to a problem in future unless they make the 2 issues above solved.
What do you guys do with your email client software that makes it crash??????????
You say it *FREE* and *Updated*, but for me I felt it is not the best as "acahyadi" has already raised some issues I would like to add some more
1) Thunderbird is NOT different in terms of STABILITY on computers running NORMAL processes -[Firewall, Antivirus,Network Monitoring, OneNote, Wordweb, SoundMAX, Firefox, RSSBandit]- on a very STANDARD computer -[Intel P4 800FSB, 512MB RAM, 80GB SATA]- with 256KBPS Broadband.
2) Add-ons give you many FEATURES but you CANT COMPARE it with FEATURES IN OUTLOOK -can anyone add live charts in E-mail with Thunderbird, raise you hand(!)
3) Thunderbird is NOT COMPLETELY BUG FREE -Mozilla keeps it updated, however, you will find venerabilities in code. [I am not kidding, here]
4) Can you make Thunderbird universal, without being Techy??
'Outlook saves all E-mails in one file' -- Yes this is something M$ should look at.
Finally DONT blame MICROSOFT for VENERABILITIES, they are the most popular O/S maker so naturally cracker will love to crack, I am using Linux for five years but still use XP as my primary o/s.
- In Answer to Many of the Previous Points
- by c|net Reader September 21, 2007 10:09 AM PDT
- First, Outlook does support multiple mail files, but you must create the others and set up rules to redirect the incoming mail to the other folders. My company uses Outlook and has size restrictions on the main PST. I work around it by managing several PSTs.
- Reply to this comment
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(6 Comments)I've been using TBird at home for a couple of years now and I love the program. Some have pointed out that you can do myriad things in Outlook and not in TBird. Frankly, I don't see the point. In my mail program, I want to read e-mail and write e-mail. What little formatting I might do -- and I often just write plain text -- TBird handles with aplomb. Perhaps such complaints are from the mistaken notion that one program should do everything instead of using a separate program to produce some content that is then included in an e-mail.
I hadn't noticed or considered the export issue with TBird. That is mildly disconcerting since TBird could lose support to some open source newcomer at any time. That isn't a problem now, but I can see how it could be a problem in the future. The question is what format to export to so the largest number of other clients can import it. I see that Outlook supports CSV for import/export. The output looks simple enough, so TBird could support it easily enough. I wonder if anyone has asked for it?
Finally, on the integration with third party products like smart phones and PDAs, very little is supported besides Outlook. If you need that functionality, then you pretty much need Outlook. Any other e-mail client will suffer the same problem. That's the fault of the third party product vendors, of course. If TBird gains a big enough slice of the market and enough customers ask for TBird support, then the vendors may well add it. That doesn't help anyone today, however.