What mail client do you prefer for personal use? Most of us don't have a choice at work, and even if we do then it tends to come with different criteria to typical home and family use.

Personally, I quite like Windows Live mail. It has an excellent calendar and contacts management system which enables all my desktops and laptop to remain synchronised. It integrates with MSN and my phone, while also providing a web interface for those times you find yourself naked and alone with nothing but a browser. It also automatically updates contact details for anyone on MSN, and to be honest I can't think of anything else I'd want it to do. It even does local backups automatically by default, in addition to the obvious essential online backup.

My second choice would be Thunderbird. OE is more efficient, but TB runs on more platforms and offers more.

Outlook is horrible. It's slow and unreliable. I've lost count of the number of people asking me for help with corrupted ost files, and they never have a backup.

I've not used any of the Mac offerings, or Lotus. Many years ago I did use Pegasus but I'm not sure if that's even still alive?

For many people, an email client is totally pointless. Provided you have broadband, webmail works perfectly. To be perfectly honest, I rather wish I always had internet access because I think if I did then I'd just live Google.

NB - I did have several other options in the poll, but I had to delete them because of the super retarded artificial arbitrary anal limit of just ten options permitted per poll. If your option is not listed, I'm very sorry. You are "other". It's not my fault. Special apologies go to The Bat! which I know some of you have used, but X404 poll nazi said there was no room for Bats, PIE or Cheese here.

Outlook for my MS email, webmail everything else or sync via my phone

Not outlook express or mail, Outlook (missed a big one there!)

Mail. The original, authentic, Mac version.

Was it with Vista that Microsoft decided Mail was a good name???

I didn't miss it. I was forced to delete it because of the retarded 10 choice limit - it was originally listed right after OE, but I figured not many people would use it at home compared to OE or Mail. Microsoft already have 2 options there, so I had to delete one.

Windows 3.11

Probably before your time, and I suspect maybe before Apple

LOL

Why did they drop it?

As for the whole outlook thing, I'd imagine it would be in the top five???

I didn't think it would beat Microsoft OE or Microsoft Mail for home use. How many people have the full Office suite at home? None of my friends do. To me, it's a Work thing rather than a Home thing. You only use Outlook if you have an exchange server, because it's so f*cking expensive why else would you buy it?

An like I said, I suspect Microsoft OE and Mail to pretty much walk the poll anyway. Of course, I could be wrong but giving MS 3 options out of the 10 possible would look sic.

in OS X i use MS Entourage which now has exchange installed so it now can use Hotmail
in XP SP3 i use Outlook Express which is now able to use Hotmail
added ... now also Thunderbird in XP can connect with Hotmail
in Ubuntu 9.10 i use Evolution which can also now use Hotmail

XP and Ubuntu are installed in VB on the OS X system
i use them mainly as reference when repairing systems …

Outlook for my Windows machines, Mail on the Mac and Kontakt on Linux, Mail on my iPhone.

Outlook is great for managing contacts and keeping it synced with MobileMe. That plus the push service from Exchange Server means I get pretty much all of my email everywhere.

Web mail.

Obviously, I only use Apple Mail.app now.

In the olden days, though, I used the Mac version of OE, and then migrated to the industrial strength Entourage. I quite liked it, to be honest, but there were way more features in it than I need.

After I'd had my fill of crashes and corrupted data files, and Apple had finally made Mail.app a stable and reliable piece of free software, I ditched Entourage. It's part of my master plan to remove any requirement I may have that needs Microsoft software installed. It's just Excel that keeps clinging on now - and while Open Office is free, it's not a clean and pleasant interface yet. It'll get there, I think, but for now Excel is the first choice for my VAT return calculations.

Mail is okay. I've used it as a main email client for about five years now. I know how it works, so I don't think I'll be switching to another client any time soon.

Primarily, Outlook Express. And a little webmail for good luck.

KMail.

I use GMail all the time, I like its simplicity and functionality. I believe (I may be wrong) that my Mister uses Outlook at home though.

I use Mail.app on my Mac. The reason I use a client, is, I guess, primarily so I can access all my accounts in one place and I can browse them offline. I know I could work around the first issue by forwarding everything into GMail, for example, but then things would get very messy very quickly, and it just requires work to set up all messages to be tagged/grouped correctly.