which email program

I intend to move from outlook express to either msn explorer or windows live hotmail.
I welcome any advice on which one to choose. I would prefer one with anti spam attributes.

Window Live Mail works very well for me. Allows me to connect via IMAP to two Hotmail accounts and a few non-Microsoft ones without any problems. The junk mail filters seems to work fairly well - they're never perfect unless very carefully tailored to your individual requirements.

FWIW - I use Windows Live Mail - same look and feel as OutLook so no great hassle learning new formats etc..

Can be used to pick up multiple mail boxes, including hotmail.

Includes junk mail filters.

Language was a real pain when it was first release, no English/English only US/English - but that seems to have been fixed now.

Edited by deleted (Thu 02-Jul-09 21:50:05)

If it's spam you're worried about and particularly if you only use a single mail account, Mailwasher is an excellent tool. It's not a client but a utility that sits between your client and server.

In reply to a post by AnotherExPipex:

The junk mail filters seems to work fairly well - they're never perfect unless very carefully tailored to your individual requirements.

Personally, I use K9 which is a free, small footprint, low resource but thoroughly excellent utility for filtering spam.. Like MailWasher, sits between your client and the server.. Takes about 10 minutes to setup, and once trained (which does not take long) filters 99.99% of spam (I'd like to say 100% but the odd one slips through and telling K9 takes seconds)..

Sounds good, but unfortunately I only use IMAP to access my mail servers.

I don't know about K9 but Mailwasher does IMAP. I have an older version here if anyone wants it that caters for multiple accounts.

no one has mentioned thunderbird, which is surprising.

Not really. You can't get IMAP access to Hotmail accounts with Thunderbird.

Really? Who cares. It's you that insists on imap, not the OP. POP3 access to hotmail is still doable with thunderbird.

Edited by deleted (Sat 04-Jul-09 16:07:19)

How do you know what the OP wants? I'm surprised that anyone bothers with POP3 nowadays.

That's nice.

POP3 access may perhaps now be secondary to webmail but it still enjoys far greater usage than IMAP.
BTW, Windows Mail has some very annoying issues with many IMAP servers.