Windows Vista in a Nutshell

Chapter 6. Windows Mail

Windows Mail, the mail reader built into Windows Vista, is the successor to Outlook Express, which was built into previous versions of Windows. There have been some cosmetic and feature changes between Outlook Express and Windows Mail, but to a great extent, the basic operations of the mail program have remained the same.

Microsoft may have named the mail client Windows Mail because of the confusion between Outlook and Outlook Express. Outlook, shipped with Microsoft Office, is a more full-featured mail reader and includes a built-in calendar, task list, and other tools, so it’s possible that Microsoft renamed Outlook Express to better differentiate the two programs. This is somewhat ironic, because Microsoft decided to name the email program Outlook Express in the first place to imply that it was a “lite” version of Outlook, even though there was really no relationship between the programs.

Even though Outlook offers more features, Windows Mail is a powerful email program. It includes spam filtering, good searching features, the capability to create rules to automatically handle incoming mail, and more.

Although Windows Mail is much like Outlook Express, there have been a number of changes, deletions, and additions to the program:

New toolbar

A new toolbar has been added, just below the menu, that gives access to Windows Mail’s most commonly used features, such as creating, replying to, and forwarding mail; sending mail; printing mail; deleting mail; and searching. ...