Alternative to Outlook or Outlook express?

raptormonkey

raptormonkey

raptormonkey

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I am moving away from Microsoft Office etc and was wondering if there is a good email client (free) i can use that gives me almost the same as Outlook Express? I want to be able to use my pop email and not use webmail (VirginMedia). Ta
 
I guess the obvious suggestion would be Thunderbird... doesn't have all the sophisticated PIM functionality of Outlook, but as a standalone email client it's pretty decent. :)
 
Try thunderbird 3 beta 3, much better especially with the lightning plugin for full ICS calendars! Download some of the themes to spruce it up a little and its fine!
 
You could also use a better webmail such as Gmail which will allow you to connect to your current POP email system much like you do currently.

You can then (if you wanted) use Thunderbird etc to connect to that via IMAP (which is lots better than POP3).
 
Very basically..

With POP3 you download emails to that PC, and they're stored and kept on that PC. So if you use two PCs you end up with half your emails on one and half your emails on the other. They're not synced.

With IMAP emails are always stored on the remote server; this means you can access your email on several PCs using several email clients, you can reply to emails, delete emails or move them into whatever folders you like and all the changes will be synced with the other PCs automatically (and gmail webmail, for example). It even allows you to read the email on one PC, and have it be marked as read automatically on the others.

Configuring IMAP is simple, it's no more difficult than setting up POP3 email but is miles better :).
 
~Divine~Wind~ said:
INCREDIMAIL!!!!!
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Stinking - If I wanted a little man appearing to tell me I have an email I'd employ a short butler to check for me.

I use Outlook mainly because I've used it for years in the office and I like the rules systems you can create. Thunderbird is a good free alternative as is the built in Windows Mail.
 
raptormonkey said:
Can this be done with most ISP email accounts and web based emails?
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Probably not - Gmail certainly offers it for free though.

As gillywibble says, basically you could do this;
1. Configure Gmail to automatically download email from your POP server (very simple to do)
2. Connect to Gmail through IMAP with Outlook or whatever to download your email


If you're happy using POP then just stick with it, but IMAP is very nice - and having a decent webmail is nice too.

Thunderbird for a desktop email client is great. Or if you have Vista/Windows 7 Windows Mail is very good I found.
 
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