A Review of Microsoft's New Windows Live Mail

If you've used Microsoft Windows anytime during the last... oh... decade, or so, or even if you've used a Macintosh, you're probably very familiar with the standard free email/newsgroup client that comes bundled with Windows (and that used to come with Macs as well).

Microsoft Outlook Express.

For some, no doubt, those three words, and the memories they bring to mind, are likely enough to cause one to run screaming from the room. For others, in all likelihood (since Microsoft didn't become the most powerful software company in the world by doing NOTHING right), Outlook Express brings back fond memories. Some (many?) people, of course, are still using it today, likely all on the Windows side of the world, since Microsoft never came out with a version for Mac OS X, choosing instead to spend its time and efforts on Microsoft Entourage, the email client bundled with Microsoft Office for Macs.

Anyway, if you've recently picked up a copy of Windows Vista, one thing that might have immediately jumped out at you was the fact that Outlook Express no longer exists. That's right... it's gone! In its place is Windows Mail, Windows Mail has new spam and anti-fishing abilities, which is nice, but recently another Microsoft product came out (still in beta, so watch out for rough edges!), that caught my eye:

Windows Live Mail

If you've been a hotmail user, you probably noticed in the recent past that your hotmail account suddenly received new branding. Sure, your email address was still whatever@hotmail.com, but the webpage you went to had suddenly changed to Windows Live Hotmail. Same service, new look.

In May, the busy people at Windows Live released a beta desktop client for the Hotmail service (and POP3 and IMAP accounts as well), called Windows Live Mail, and I decided to give it a try.

Windows Live Mail is available for both XP and Vista, and has the same feature set in either. One of the features that immediately set it apart for me (in considering whether to continue to use either Outlook Express in XP or Windows Mail in Vista), was that Windows Live Mail could handle three things: POP3 mail, Gmail, and RSS/Atom feeds.