Vista - Problems switching from Windows Mail to Windows Live Mail

When I recently tried to switch from using Windows Mail under Vista SP2
to using Windows Live Mail instead, I encountered a few problems that
prevented me from switching successfully.

First, an odd but not disabling feature: After I installed the Windows
Live Essentials update to get Windows Live Mail, no icon or similar
listing showed up for the new program where I could call it easily.
However, I was able to find its location and call the program directly.

Second, a disabling problem: Windows Live Mail started importing
my Windows Mail database, but about halfway through the import,
it froze and would not import the rest. Is it possible to tell it to delete
what it already has and do the import again, with the considerable
changes I've made in the Windows Mail database since then?

Note - it seems that Windows Mail has problems opening storage
folders with many more than 50000 messages if the sort order is
set to sort messages by date and time received at the newsgroups
server, at least if also set to group messages by conversation. I
suspect that the changeover procedure opens Windows Mail
folders using a method with a method with a similar problem, since
the folder in which the failure occured had over 139,000 messages
of which less than half were transferred successfully to Windows
Live Mail.

Third, a less important problem: The newsgroups section of
Windows Live Mail does not seem to include any options for
reaching commands other that the few shown on the top menu
bar. Where are they hidden, if they are available at all?

Fourth, when importing news rules, it wants to assign all rules
for filtering a specific newsgroup to only one newsgroups server
specified separately by the user for each such rule. Is there any
way to just tell it to assign such rules to every newsgroups
server for which that newsgroup is subscribed? It would be
even better if this option could be remembered, so that the rule
would also be applied to any new newsgroups servers for which
that newsgroup was subscribed.

Windows Mail can open such large storage folders successfully
if you first turn off grouping messages by conversation, and also
set the sort order to largest message first. I'd like to see if the
division of that large folder I did into several subfolders each with
less than 50,000 messages which I've done since seeing the
above problems also allow Windows Live Mail to import all of
the subfolders successfully.

A WLM feature I'd like, but haven't been able to look for yet:
The ability to switch over from Windows Mail to Windows
Live Mail one newsgroup or group of newsgroups at a time,
in order to avoid disrupting my heavy use of newsgroups
while I learn how to use Windows Live Mail.

Another WLM feature I'd like is an option to use an alternate
user interface which looks nearly the same as the Windows
Mail user interface, but still uses the Windows Mail internals.
I'd expect that there are also a number of Outlook Express
users who'd say the same about adding a third user interface,
which looks nearly the same as the Outlook Express user
interface.

I haven't been able to check if WLM has another feature I'd
like yet: A news rules section significantly better than that for
Windows Mail. For example, the ability to filter on which
IP address was used to post the message, if the original
newsgroups server includes that information. Also, the
ability to apply stricter filtering for any messages posted
through Google Groups, which is now the major newsgroups
server used to post spam. Also, the ability to include searches
of the bodies of text messages for strings that usually
indicate spam, such as the web sites many spammers keep
mentioning (or sometimes web pages at a specific web site).
And definitely the ability to export and import sets of news
rules, in order to allow someone else who can't handle
creating their own rules to use a set from someone else
who wants the filter out the same messages. And a search
function for such rules, so that I can edit my set of news
rules (currently over 1700 of them, in WM) without first
spending a few days finding the rule I want to edit.

Robert Miles