Me wrote:
> On 7/07/2010 3:11 p.m., Christopher Muto wrote:
>> since they did not
>> offer an alternative on vista/windows7 machines many people just went
>> ahead with getting a live account as it is seemingly the easier thing to
>> do. smarter people install thunderbird
>>
> I use Thunderbird (usenet) and live mail (email).
> Just to make it clear, you do not need to sign up to a windows live or
> "hotmail" account to use live mail. MS may make it appear that way as
> they wan people to sign up, but live mail works perfectly fine (and
> better than OE or Vista mail) as a stand-alone application.

true. kind of like you could use oe without using windows messenger
that would open automatically (and could not be closed without closing
oe). but windows live is all about the online synchronization with
live.com so that your address book, calendar, etc is synced with the
live.com account. it is not necessarily a bad things to have your data
automatically backed up, but you are putting your personal information
on somebody else's server. i recall when google released google buzz,
its social network answer to facebook, and to get their gmail users
started they automatically created accounts with all the people in your
address book as 'friends' letting the world know everyone that you know.
nice huh? of course it was pretty quickly reversed but such is the
risk of having all of your personal information on a server that is not
owned or controlled by you. also, given the comments about thunderbird
being bloatware, my understanding is that live mail includes an instant
messenger like oe did as well as a photo editor and a movie maker that
install along with the mail reader (as well as the supporting software
namely .net, sql compact edition, and directx). seems like a lot of
overhead if the only intended use is as a mail reader. but these are
just petty points. if you like it better then that is all that really
matters. lots of good comparisons out there of the two that are just a
google search away.