**__MIke__**

"You cannot use the compatibility mode. OE on XP uses completely different
locations for storing the message store and those locations don't exist in
Vista."

Actually in my case both programs use a data storage location on a third
partition. My setup is
c:\ -> XP MCE
d:\ -> Vista
e:\ -> Data

e:\ houses the desktop, documents and favorites for both OS's (actualy the
same files) so that they remain updated when switching OS's. There is also
an e:\program data\XXX location that holds program data for both OS's, which
is where Outlook, OE and WinMail store their messages. In the case of
Outlook, this allows me to let Outlook 2003 on MCE use the same .pst file as
Outlook 2007 on Vista, thus my email is always synched correctly no matter
what OS I'm in. Also my data remains intact and current when a drive is
restored from a backup image (which I do fairly often).

So file location is not a problem, but nether program running in Both OS's
is. As i stated, I've tried Thunderbird and while it works for this purpose,
I'm not happy with the program. Maybe someone knows a 3rd party news reader
they're particuclarly happy with? What I want is to be able to sort threaded
messages by date (ascending) as well as by watched status and update the
sort when I add/remove watched threads, so that watched threads remain at
the bottom of the list. I can do this in T-Bird but when I add a new watched
thread, I have to start the sort over by date which unthreads all the
messages, then rethread them, then sort by watched messages, which takes
forever in a group with a lot of messages. In addition, a few messages
always seem to remain out of order in T-bird. In OE/WinMail, you just click
the icon at the top of watched column, which brings all watched threads to
the top and click it once more to bring them to the bottom and your're done.
(All other threads remain sorted by ascending date)

I think I'm gonna concentrate on tricking OE into running under Vista since
it's faster then WinMail anyway. I'll post back her if I get it working, but
would appreciate any input if someone else gets it or recommnds a good third
party app.

-Mike