Email in Windows 7

[bjkowalsk]

Hello,
I bought a new computer with Windows 7 and absolutely hate the email programs I have tried. All of them have issues. I am using Windows Live Mail but half of our messages ends up on my husbands computer. This is suppose to be a great new sharing program but it sucks. I've tried Office 2003, Incredible mail, Thunderbird and I have had some kind of problem with all of them. Aside from purchasing the full version of Office 2007 do you have any suggestions.

 

[Zoron]

It's not a "sharing" program if your email server isn't set up for it. If you're on a POP3 server, your email will get downloaded to the first client you open. Once the messages are downloaded, they are deleted off the server and thus inaccessible to other clients; if there are any new messages, however, the second client you open will download those. You can tell Windows Live Mail to leave a copy of the messages on the server for a number of days that you specify... this will allow both clients to download messages before they're deleted... provided you open the other client within the specified amount of days. Outlook and Outlook Express would work exactly the same way.

My ISP has switched to Windows Live for message storage... this allows any computer I sign into to fully sycronize all my mail folders, so long as I haven't manually deleted any mail. When using POP3, I had the same issue you did... one computer would download the mail and the other would get nothing. Once I set one computer to leave a copy of messages on the server, both computers could download all messages.

Your email client can only download the messages if they are on the server. If they have been removed from the server, then any other computer accessing that account obviously won't be able to download them. If your ISP offers webmail, you might want to consider that rather than using an email client... it makes it much easier for everyone to have access to all the same emails without worrying about changing any settings. If you prefer to use a client, remember to tell at least one of them to leave a copy of messages on the server if you want to access that same email from another client on another computer.

 

[Herr_Koos]

Gmail ;-)