So I'm moving on from low-level play with Win7 (on my new laptop) and getting round to making it "my own" - having (finally, after a year) installed my Blackberry software, I'm now looking into what can be done with my emails, calendar and address book (so I might sync them).

Noting Outlook Express (of yesteryear) has now been replaced with Windows Mail Live - I'm just wondering if I might be better off looking into an open source alternative, say Thunderbird? It's not that I'm against MS or anything - and I'm happy to use OS-integrated solutions - I just thought I'd ask to see what gains (if any) there might be.

Thunderbird is one program my parent's installed and haven't asked for support with.

I'm very happy with it.

I actually prefer Live mail. The integration with Messenger is particularly good if you use that, and of course it syncs calendar and contacts as well as mail. The interface is very familiar to anyone who uses Outlook.

Thunderbird with the Lightning extension (that's the calendar) is really rather good.

I only don't use it because I don't need the features, which are manifold.