I've always used Microsoft Outlook as my e-mail client and until yesterday I was using Outlook 2002 as my current version. However I have cleared out my PC completely and have been upgrading and updating my software and I've seen the ridiculous cost of a Microsoft Office package that includes Outlook in it and I've baulked.

I suppose I could always re-install Outlook 2002 but I thought this would be a good time to reflect on other options in the market. Is Thunderbird any good? Is there any point to Microsoft Live?

Does the trick for me.

I use Outlook 2003 at work and Hotmail for personal use.

Hotmail - It works, Its free and you can log onto any PC in the world and get your mail (just like any other web based email account).

Outlook 2003 and Hotmail.

I use Windows Live Mail. It's quite nice.

I use Thunderbird as a client for both my domain mail as well as all my GMail accounts.

It's not as flash but it can do the same job, is a fraction of the size, and doesn't eat up memory and resources the minute it's started.

Windows Live Mail and the AOL Email interface.

Thanks guys. I have a day off today and the painters been in so I hid away in my office and had a play about with e-mail clients. I didn't really like Windows Live Mail. It's too much like Hotmail which I always hated. Thunderbird was good but I reckoned it would take a bit of messing about to get it to the way I'd like it.....

....and then I found the Outlook 2007 60 day trial version. Wow. 30 minutes later I paid for the licence and I'm sorted. I love it. Love the layout. Love the multi layer calendars. Love the sync with Google calenders without the need for add ons. Love the address book. Love the way it sets up your e-mail accounts. Love everything.

is it possible to set up AOL email with Thunderbird/Outlook?

edit: worked it out.

Good place for hiding, was she getting a bit crabbit?

I find Outlook just a bit bulky for home use. In an office environment it's fine as you are likely to be connected to a network and have a mail server. You are right about Thunderbird though, it can take a little messing about to get it exactly how you want it.

No calendar in Thunderbird as default, but there is this...

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/

Which offers two apps, the oddly named "Lightning" and "Sunbird"; the former integrates with Thunderbird, the latter is a stand alone app.

bugger!....you beat me to it!

Just hotmail, was thinking of purchasing a domain name just for emails because I prefer mail clients to webmail. And since im running Vista now I want a wee shot of Windows Mail.

Have had a look at Thunderbird in the past briefly via a remote conection, not sure which relase it was, wasnt that impressed by it.

Hotmail (or Live, whichever you want to call it) has changed recently which means that at present only Outlook 2003 and Outlook XP are able to integrate directly into it. For things like Thunderbird, which can access other pop3 webmail accounts (GMail for example), you need to use a local POP3 app which will download the emails and pass them onto your local client - in this case TB. The problem with that is you can't send as there is no SMTP gateway enabled.

In terms of a domain name, which would come with almost unlimited email addresses, and just in case you didn't know, nearly all of them will come with POP3 and SMTP enabled.

Indeed, its just that we have a network at work and use an exchange server so we can share calenders and shit like that, was wanting something similar at home but seeing as im not running XP or Outlook 2003 its webmail for me at the moment.

Actually if I downloaded Outlook 2003 could I set up a hotmail pop3 account on it?

Only if you pay for it, Microsoft stopped offering POP3 support on free hotmail accounts a while back.

I use outlook just because it came with vista, have tried thunderbird and it does the job but I don't like the look of it.

Proper b*****ds I tell thee.

No - that's wrong. Outlook 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 all allow you to view Hotmail e-mails within the client. It's not POP3 it's HTTP but it works from within the client. I've been using that for years now and it was the main reason I dumped Express and started to use Outlook.

What Dickson said... Well nearly anyway. If you have Outlook 2003 or 2007 you are able to download your Hotmail contents using the Outlook Connector.

Clickage

Jay - I've never downloaded an add on - although I might well try this one. Since Office 2000 you've been able to set up a Hotmail account on Outlook. I've got Outlook 2003 on my works laptop here, and when you go into tools - e-mail accounts - add a new e-mail account - you get a list of five options. The fourth one down is HTTP and it says "Connect to an HTTP e-mail server such as Hotmail to download e-mail and synchronize mailbox folders." - it's really simple, low tech stuff.

In the current version, 2007, all you do is type in your e-mail address and the account password. Outlook then goes off and gets the rest of the mail settings for you. It's fantastic.

Ric, that can't be right. I'm on Outlook 2007 and Hotmail works perfectly on there. Again, like I said it doesn't use a POP3 element, instead it is HTTP but it works in exactly the same manner as any other e-mail account on Outlook.

As far as I was aware, Microsoft had stopped allowing email clients to download emails via POP3 and HTTP. I know this because at the time I purchased Outlook 2003, any hotmail accounts added would never authenticate. Further investigation into this led me to uncover this little bit of software called the Outlook Connector - to download you're required to validate your Office installation, therefore anyone with a dodgy copy of Office or Outlook, would not be able to download their hotmail. The other weird part of Outlook is it's inability to authenticate with Yahoo also.

As for your observation I've highlighted in bold, I agree it's a very nice feature that they have included in the installation. It becomes even nicer when you're connecting to an Exchange server, where you don't even need to type in your email address or username.



I know Outlook XP used to authenticate with hotmail servers but I'm not sure if an installation of it would anymore. Outlook 2003 and 2007 both authenticate with hotmail.

Yup, sorry all I did there was leave out 2007 on that list. The Hotmail integration with that is, as you say, not POP3, but for other mail clients it would need to be.

Jay, are we still talking about e-mail here, or are we talking about calendars.

I have a number of e-mail addresses. I've got a Hotmail account which is seldom used these days, but that I have used through Outlook XP since 2002 using the standard set up tools available in XP, 2003, and 2007 under the HTTP settings. My main e-mail account is a Yahoo account, again I use Outlook to run that account. For that one I use the POP3 settings as supplied by Yahoo in their mail options page. Both have worked perfectly well for me for 6 years now across all three versions without the need for plug in's or add ons.

I've also got a number of domain e-mail accounts which I use through Outlook using the standard POP3 mail settings as set up using the mail servers supplied with the hosting package that I use.

Perhaps I am just not getting your point but if I am, honestly it works.

Ric, fair enough. I don't know a great deal about other mail clients as Outlook has been my preferred choice since XP came out.

I stand corrected, I've just added my hotmail account to Outlook 2003 using just the HTTP settings as you've mentioned before. Microsoft must have changed their stance on this quite a bit since the requirement for the Outlook Connector then. A little more digging on this, it seems that the only use for the Outlook Connector now is for those who pay the annual fee for Hotmail and want to download calendar contents... It appears I stand corrected on Hotmail...

I'll take your word for it on the Yahoo issue

So would I be able to download Outlook 2003 and I should be ok with a @hotmail.com e-mail address?

Indeed you can. But obviously I couldn't possibly condone the downloading of programs such as Microsoft Outlook...

Spiceworld!

I use Thunderbird and Lightening and would never consider buying Outlook licenses now.

i also use Open Office software rather than Microsoft Office and am very happy with them.

Open Office just doesn't quite cut the mustard, and it's purely down to the way MS Word renders an OO created document. I can't risk having an important document not being read properly, or judged based on it's layout, because Word makes a mess of it.

Thats why you want to use Latex!

As far as I'm aware, OO can't deal with any of the new 2007 format files e.g. *.docx, *.xlsx etc.

No, distinctly I do not want to use LaTEX!


For me it's the other way round, I can save a document formatted in RTF in OO and it will open in Word, but the formatting will be lost. Word is the market leader and is used by just about everyone I speak to in the industry and when it's technical documents, or a tender or a job interview covering letter, then I can't have the thing looking worse than when I saved it.

For that reason alone I use Word. I have a sneaky 80Mb complete, but stripped down, install for Office 2003. Compared to the several gig versions of the full office it's a God send.

I'm in full agreement, the only people that I know who prefer to use OO are those who can't afford to fork out for a Microsoft Office product. It's real strength is the ability to take something produced by Microsoft Office and get the drift of what's going on in the document.

You seem to think I am praising Word in some way. I am not. I don't like the app and only use it because other people use it. If OO could get their documents saved in a way that doesn't break Words formatting, I would uninstall Word in seconds.

It doesn't have a real strength, only numerous weaknesses. MS Word causes more time to be lost through application and user error than any product I have known.

Fair enough. I thought with saying "Word is the market leader" you were blowing its trumpet... For the record I quite like most Office products, they do everything I want them to without much fuss and most problems relating to them are easily fixed. I have got Open Office installed but purely for the purposes of being able to open a multitude of file types.

Why not just pay for Office 2007 and get the latest version? It's not that expensive.

My kids are in full time education and I don't use Office for commercial purposes on my home PC so I used Software 4 Students and it cost me £35 odd for Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint and Word. Seemed crazy not to.

Right, downloaded Outlook 2003, set the email account up, sent a test email and got this error:


Task 'Hotmail: Folder:Inbox Synchronizing headers.' reported error (0x800CCCF7) : 'The server responded 'This operation is not permitted for this type of client.'. '

Any idea's?

I get this error, using Outlook 2003 and a @hotmail.co.uk account I had sitting around..



The http://join.msn.com/general/email mentioned forwards to http://get.live.com/ which is nothing more than a signup page. If you go to the sign up Microsoft actually thinks you are going to download and install the relevant applications.. ..which is utter madness considering places like GMail not only offer a completely free web based service with no downloads, installs or Microsoft branded spyware, they provide a standard POP3 and SMTP account - both of which can easily be set up to work with Outlook.

If I was to give my opinion? Use GMail or buy a domain name and use that. Both can be accessed through a web front end or by using Outlook or Thunderbird. Hotmail is pointless, and more hassle than it's worth. It's also highly devalued over the years. Thanks to fishing, most sites will stop Hotmail sign ups.

Hmmm. My Hotmail account is a .com - I wonder if that makes a difference? I certainly don't pay Hotmail a sub - no point since it just seems to collect junk mail for me - but I've also never had a problem setting up to collect and send e-mails from a Hotmail account in Outlook.