MICHAEL

* Charlie Tame:
> TS Mathews wrote:
>> Any and every time I've hit "catch up" the program has failed and given
>> me the prompt to the effect, "I can restart or go to the internet to try
>> to find a solution." Restarting simply takes me back to where I was
>> with the additional prompt beforehand for me to setup an e -mail account.
>>
>> It didn't happen once, or on occasion, it happened each and every time I
>> moved to a new newsgroup until, after the sixth time, I decided that if
>> it didn't work any better than that, I'd try Windows Live Mail Desktop.

Tim:
My advice is to use Thunderbird. I don't like Windows Mail or WLMD.
I experienced some of the same issues you have. I gave up and moved on
to a better newsreader. That's all I use Thunderbird for, like you I use
Outlook for email. I couldn't imagine having to put up with Windows Mail
for email... it is a lightweight POS, and should still be in beta testing and
not part of a major OS release.

> Both work together on this machine (Vista 64) and on Vista 32 but both
> are slow and unreliable compared to Thunderbird.

Hey, Charlie!

I agree about Thunderbird. I tried to like Windows Mail, and the
only thing I used it for was newsgroups. I gave up and switched
to Thunderbird, a much better experience.

I tried WLMD and found it to be buggy, too. Although, that was a
few months back. However, I'm not fond of the adware based concept
of WLMD and will stick to using TB as my newsreader.

> Outlook Express was also considerably slower. It's obviously not a
> server issue since it's the same server, but perhaps to do with the way
> some of the data is accessed or the database model used by MS.

While Outlook Express had its own issues, I thought it worked just fine
for newsgroups... at least for what I needed. Since I've been using Outlook
so long for email, I can't really offer too much opinion on OE or WinMail's
email reliability.... for newsgroups, especially, busy newsgroups- it's awful.

> As for setting it as default I think that should be possible but can't
> give a definite answer, sorry.

Should not be a problem at all.


Take care,

Michael