Microsoft Outlook Express

Current Version: 5.0.6

This free combined email (POP3/SMTP/IMAP) / Usenet news client is positioned as an add-on for Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser. Version 5.0.6 addresses the following:

• Includes support for MSN Web mail accounts;
• Resolves all security vulnerabilities in previous versions of Outlook Express 5. This includes vulnerabilities that might have caused Outlook Express to stop responding or caused a memory problem that compromised the security of the computer as well as a security vulnerability that can enable an attacker who had a valid security certificate to issue an invalid subordinate certificate that would appear to be valid. For more information, see Microsoft Security Bulletins MS02-050 and MS02-019.

Outlook Express is a competitive piece of software, with all kinds of nifty features. But it's also a mess visually - the fact that it still wields a space-wasting, overly complex three-paned interface makes me loath to recommend it all too highly. It also has more menu selections than your average CAD program, and it's extraordinarily slow to import email from other applications; my Eudora Pro mailbox, with over 25,000 saved messages, was going to take over 4 hours (!) to import. Forget it. For newsreading, keep in mind that the Mac has some of the best newsreaders on any platform; use them for reading Usenet news instead. But for all its faults, this product just keeps getting better. In the meantime, I'll stick to Eudora and MT/YA-NewsWatcher.