There are just as many email programs as there are internet browsers.

Microsoft Outlook

Most Windows users will be familiar with some form of Outlook.  As part of the office suite, outlook offers reliability and a full suite of editing tools to control your emails.  Outlook also has calendars and tasks functionality.

Microsoft Outlook isn’t free though.  If you run Windows 7 or Windows Vista, you’ll have a copy of Windows Mail which is essentially a very cut down version of Outlook. If you have XP or previous you’ll have Outlook Express.  If you do want to buy Microsoft Outlook you can buy it standalone or as part of the Office Suite, either way you’ll be looking to part with more than £70.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird is my email client of choice.  From the same teams that runs Firefox, the world’s most popular internet browser, comes Mozilla Thunderbird.  Just like Firefox, Thunderbird is free, and simple to set up.

Version 3 was released earlier this year and whilst not as fully featured as Microsoft Outlook, it is gaining features, including tabbed browsing through emails and a very fast indexed search that lets you specify dates and other conditions to filter through results. Thunderbird will also run on pretty much any platform, including Windows, Linux and OSX.  An official Mozilla plug-in Lightning provides calendar functionality to rival Outlook’s.

Download Mozilla Thunderbird

GoogleMail / GMail

Google Mail is a slightly different approach to email.  Rather than encouraging users to set up email programs and download mail to their desktops (though of course you can) Google tries to entice you to use it online so you can access it anywhere in the world.

Rather than using folders, Google has tags for your email to help organise things as well as a range of other features, including filters to process mail automatically when it arrives, beer goggles to stop accidental emailing immediately after a gentlemen’s snifter of sauce and many more experimental features besides.

Get Google Mail

Digsby collates all of your networks into one easy way to log in and communicate from one interface.

You need to create a Digsby account which then stores all your login information. They claim their servers are secure, and I’ve not had any problems over the past few months I’ve been using Digsby.

Another very nifty feature is to generate a widget to place on your website or blog that lets you chat in real-time with visitors to your site.

It’s still a relatively new program and seems a little bandwidth-intensive when checking POP email, but the development continues to progress rapidly and new fixes are being applied all the time.

Check out digsby at: http://www.digsby.com/