Where is my mail?


What - no mail client in Windows 7.

The answer is yes there is no mail client in Windows 7 and there is reason to be glad. That reason is Windows Live Mail. A separate software suite that the user has to decide to download and install. In the package comes the mail client, movie maker, photo email, Silverlight and a few other bells and whistles to choose from. Yes - I did say choose. You can download all or none.


Many of our clients are involved with their families and the advent of social networking sites have made the number of pictures available to me - the budding grandpa - simply amazing. So many that keeping up is tough and finding a way to share them with others tougher yet. That is but one of the reasons that Windows Live Mail is so much fun. Yes I said fun.


The auto connect feature pretty much makes setting up the account a breeze. Better yet is so far it handles all eight of my email accounts in one client. All I did was click add. Insert email address provide password and then click finish. Email accounts added and Windows Live Mail syncs all the clients and presents me with the unread mail in a straight forward easy to find list. So every email I used to access different ways each time are each right there at my fingertips. Read, reply, forward or save.


Contacts are just as easy. Each email client tends to collect its own contact list. My yahoo mail is my main one and has all my family and many friends. Along with each email client it is just as easy to import the contact list into Windows Live Mail. Now yahoo still wants to be converted to comma separated values and the option to build the contact/address book is not as easy as setting up the email. But pretty close.


Mail - who to send to from where and how. Windows Live Mail keeps track of it for you. Each of my mail accounts are designed to help me. Yahoo is friends and family. The address rarely changes and makes it easier to keep up with them and older friends. G-mail is more modern and I tend to use it for the business stuff I do on the web like registering software and the like. Of course AOL has been with me as long as the internet has and it is a throwaway address I just use to track things and junk mail. The cool thing is that when you reply to an email, Windows Live Mail sends the reply via the mail address you received the mail from and in the same format - that means your friend can get your email from an address they know and in the format they are used to reading it in. Previous clients assume a default mail server and all outgoing mail is processed thru that server. Only new mail - that you generate is automatically sent via the default client. So with this new feature, the bells and whistles associated with your mail are still there. Your signature, footnotes, emoticons and stuff automatically stay with the client.


The fun in this is that everything you save is there on your computer. You can save password emails, license keys, inspirational thoughts - whatever category you choose, you can save the email and it is there. In Windows 7 - it is automatically backed up and so if a crash happens those emails are still safe. Many of these features were included in Microsoft's Office Product but face it what average person buys Office for their home PC. Live Mail incorporates the best of all Microsoft email clients into one place.


Let's talk about Photo Mail. Attaching photos to send to Aunt Rae or Me Maw was a daunting task. If you made the pictures too big they might not go through. If you sent too many then they might get lost. Then of course on the receiving end there is the question of how to open them, why can't I see them or how do I save them. Way too many questions. Sometimes you felt lucky if you got to see the pictures at all. In Photo Mail you can select the pictures you want to send. Live Mail makes it easy to decide what size you want to send. If you want to send print quality then big is better. If you want to show and tell then something smaller will work.


How about a slide show. How about an interesting frame or enhancement. What about captions and descriptions, not just a file name. All neat things to include with a picture. Now Live Mail will now do all that and more. In a matter of minutes you can send two to twenty pictures to Me Maw and she will get to see them - exactly how you intended. Even if you choose to send slideshows and the receiving computer is not able to do slideshows, your recipients can still see them the way you intended. If the computer on the other end needs help to do the slide show then the help is there. If the receiving computer needs help then the slideshow you worked so hard on is automatically ported to an open browser window using Silverlight and your slide show is right there ready to go.


Better still Windows Live Mail does not run on just Windows 7. Windows XP and Vista are supported too. So your email friends and family can also use Live Mail while accessing all those wonderful features you are discovering.


Windows Live Mail is just this: The advantage of a web based mail client that is not limited to one email address. Give Windows Live Mail a try and I bet you will be sending a link to Grandma in no time. If nothing else click the link and read the headline - like they stole it from me.

Everything in one place!

Just so you know - I don't get one cent from saying this. What I do get is that if you try it, like it, and bring a smile to someone's face with that cute picture that is lurking in your My Pictures folder then it is all worth it.