Neal Walker Computer Services

If you currently access your email through a web browser (like Internet Explorer of Firefox), then this section might be of interest to you. There are free email programs available which will make sending and receiving emails much simpler. They also make attaching files and photographs to your emails a complete doddle, not to mention very much faster than trying to do the same thing through your web browser. There are many free email programs available, such as Mozilla Thunderbird, Incredimail and Opera Mail, but the email program that I personally use and recommend is Windows Live Mail. This is because it is really simple to use and can create impressive looking emails with very little effort!

Windows Live Mail is the replacement for the older email programs Outlook Express and Windows Mail. It will allow you to access not only hotmail accounts, but yahoo mail, gmail and most other popular email accounts. Installation and setup of this program is actually very simple. There as a wizard which will take you through adding your email account(s), so you should be up and running in under 10 minutes. It will automatically import all your existing folders and emails, and it will even import your existing contacts with their email addresses. There is also a very comprehensive and useful contacts address book.

One of the huge benefits of this program is attaching files or photographs to emails. Doing this through a web browser is rather slow and painful, but you can just drag and drop your files onto your email using this program. When it comes to attaching photographs to an email, you can create a photo email. This will allow you to add photos, change their size, add borders and frames to the pictures, and change the layout of the photos on the page just by clicking on the toolbar icons. It is very simple to use and the photo emails look really amazing (with virtually no effort at all).

There is also a built-in calendar, so you can add all your birthdays and anniversaries. You can even use it as an appointments diary if you want to. It will synchronise the calendar with your Hotmail calendar, so if you access your email account in an internet cafe you will be able to see your calendar exactly like it is in Windows Live Mail.

The main point is that this program makes sending and receiving emails very easy. It will do really quite complicated and impressive things, but you absolutely don’t need to be a computer boffin to use it. I would honestly recommend you download it and give it a try. It is ,of course, free and if you don’t like it you can just uninstall it.

Lastly, don’t forget that I do run computer lessons on Windows Live Mail. So if you fancy learning more about how to get the most out of Windows Live Mail (along with the basics of email etiquette) then please give me a call.