Reclaim your inbox!

I realised tonight that even though I had rid myself of the unstable and horribly awkward Internet Explorer, I hadn't done the same with my email client, and was still using Outlook Express. Even though it's hated by many who have woken up and started avoiding Microsoft's communication programs, I maintained for ages that it was just set up stupidly at first and could easily be corrected by hunting around in the Preferences for a few minutes. But as it was nearly the beginning of the new year, I decided to give the much-recommended Thunderbird a chance to see just how it could improve my computer, email experience, income and quality of life.

It looked great when I first started it up, importing my archive of 1,287 received mails automatically and setting up my St Andrews account automatically. As I had been given a GMail invite as a small Christmas present from whinknee, I painstakingly set that up as well, though I was slightly doubtful that the tyrannical ResNet would allow it to work once I got back. I then wondered how to set up HTTP accounts in it, as I have a Hotmail account that I'm rather tied to - it's used to receive mail from people I know, LJ alerts, fan mail about how great my music is, mail about how awful my music is, and indecipherable emails from crazy people.

However, a brief search through the Thunderbird online help revealed that the program contains no HTTP mail support at all, so far from "reclaiming my inbox" I was totally isolated from it. Oh well, back to Outlook Express.