Thunderbird comes from the same people who produce Firefox, the Mozilla foundation. It's a faster, more flexible and safer email program than the default program on your Windows PC. Thunderbird comes with a very effective spam filter built in and like its web browser cousin, Firefox, you can extend it to do some things you never dreamed possible with you old email program.

Find out more and download Thunderbird from: http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird

The program has a clean, easy-to-use interface. Getting started is easy. The first time you use the program it gives to the chance to import your settings and mail folders from your old email package. This includes old email messages, address books, etc.

The next thing you will see is the Account Wizard which will lead you through setting up your email account. Made sure you are prepared before starting by diffing out some information your ISP will have given you when you first signed up. This includes your email user name and password, as well as the SMTP and POP3 server addresses for sending and receiving your email. If you've mislaid these with the passage of time you can find all but one them in the account setting of your old email program. The exception is the password which even if stored (remembered) by the computer is not viewable in human-readable form.