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It is very very VERY interesting to me to read the opinions of all of you on 7 vs. XP.

I am resisting the urge to chuck 7 and install XP on that computer so I can give 7 a chance. At this point, I am not seeing whatever its advantages are though I am sure that would come in time. What you all are addressing are exactly the thoughts I was having late last night which were: What ARE the advantages of 7 for *me* specifically? So far, I have not uncovered them but I recall fighting with XP when I switched from 95 (I tend to do these switches 12-18 mo. after they come out to avoid any early problems). However, the stability of XP and OE at that time totally won me over and made every bit of the fight worth it.

These days I am pretty direct myself about making enough money to survive in this economy so my only use for my computer is to use it in a way that makes best use of my time since to me, time=money and further, seconds count. And this leaves me only interested in using an OS that does not make me do any extra clicks or lengthy drags from one end of the window to the other. After watching all those “Windows 7 was MY idea” commercials, I want it to behave like it was MY idea and it is so far not doing that. I am sure a lot of it is because I don’t know how to work it but on things essential to my work style, I am coming here and asking how to do them.

Ted, I have looked at all 3 of those sites over the past couple of days and will continue to do so. Since I wondered if they were the best ones out there to be looking at, I was very happy to see that you recommend them. Thank you for that.

Byron, thank you for your thoughts on this. Yes, I used the off-taskbar toolbars quite a lot in XP and they are set to disappear when not needed while the taskbar is set to be always visible.. Having the Links toolbar at the top was a godsend– made it possible for me to help a lot of people in a Yahoo group who needed links and needed answers in a hurry when I was also trying to do paying work and had multiple windows of all sizes open all over the place. I like being able to almost always have all my buttons on taskbar visible rather than some being forced to hide because there was no room for them. I will try your suggestions though. It’s funny – I guess these all seem like small things, yet, to me they were huge and were things I often stopped to realize, once again, how lucky I was that they were available and made my work style possible.

I am still using XP on my old computer as I try to learn Windows 7, and make it work for me (right now it doesn’t want to let me into my own stuff even though I am logged in as Administrator). I waited for Windows 7 and really thought it was going to be the answer to needing to move forward with Windows while also having the functionality I needed. I am wondering, now, if I should have waited for Windows 8.

Stuck, thank you so much for your reply.

I too have used OE since Win95 and had no trouble with it. Long ago I read advice from an expert somewhere who said that to keep OE from corrupting its files, you must break big folders so that you only have a few thousand messages iin each. I have faithfully done that, creating new folders and moving older messages into them, and have had no problems at all. Once I had an issue where it was compacting and I had forgotten to turn off the internet connection, and lost some emails as a result, but that was my own fault.

You cleared up my question about whether anything on my own downloaded copy of WLM is going to a MS website. I do not have a hotmail account or any other programs from the Windows Live group such as Messenger. Many thanks!

Thank you Gerald!!!!!!! I have the OLD QuickLaunch which is hidden in Windows 7. I have not figured out how to make it stay visible. It seems to disappear with each reboot. Maybe it is something I am doing wrong?

I will get to work and attempt to put folders on QL bar as you have described.

I will try this to see how it works:
> As an alternative to placing a folder on the QL bar, you can drop the folder or folders on the Taskbar, and they will be moved into the Windows Explorer folder there. When you add the folders, right click on the Windows Explorer Taskbar icon and you will see your folders listed there. You can choose to “pin” any of your folders in this view. Just highlight the folder in the list and click the pin to place it in the jump list. One advantage of this method is you will not clutter your QL bar with a lot of folder icons.

Also, thank you for explaining how to get rid of that thumbnail preview. It is too small to be useful to me, and just gets in my way.I’m ok with using the registry as long as some one has given me instructions.

Russ, thank you for your reply. I actually want an exact Outlook Express clone, not Outlook, which I have had in every version of Windows since it existed, and do not care for. So I guess I still have the same question regarding a clone for Outlook Express.

Thank you, Joe! I will give that a try. I am assuming I can just run Word 2003 in Windows 7 32 bit, and not have to go into XP Mode?

I have been worried that the 154,000-message Quickview Inbox is a folder with actual duplicates of messages. After reading Banya’s problem with Documents and My Documents in this forum just now where someone pointed out that the Documents “Library” in Win 7 is merely a collection of pointers to actual files elsewhere, I wonder if the QuickView inbox is a collection of pointers to messages in other folders, and not actually a collection of messages itself.

Does anyone know?

I see I am not the only one going nuts without Outlook Express. With the amount of talented members in the Lounge, isn’t there anyone willing to take on development of an Outlook Express exact clone that works in Windows 7? You’d be a HERO to thousands of us who are heavy email users, want a single inbox with no “quickview inbox” monstrosity taking up 20 or 30 gigabytes, do not want multiple email accounts and their inboxes showing in the folders pane, and want icons back on the tool bar instead of words etc. etc. and etc.

I’d be happy to pay for such a thing if someone would develop it and I bet other users would too.

Windows 7 is useless to me without Outlook Express (and I can’t use Vista).

Thank you, experts, for considering this.

If you are a heavy email user and do a lot of sorting and archiving in a large number of folders, OE is the only thing that works properly. I may be going back to XP if I can’t find a mail substitute for Outlook Express that meets my needs.

have XP Home on one laptop. I “upgraded” to the latest version of Norton AV after using the 2003 version all these years because I’d tried newer Norton AV and it took forever to scan. So when the hard disk went south, and I installed a new one, I reinstalled 2003.

Anyway, immediately after installing the current 2010 Norton AV, boot time slowed to a crawl and unchecking the “scan when starting up” did nothing.

The symantec tech had me do something that changed a “timeout” when starting up to fewer seconds and boot time instantly shortened dramatically. Unfortunately I don’t know how or where this “timeout” for bootup was (it was not done from within the Norton AV program menus at all, I think I had to do “Run” and type in something or use a DOS window, but not sure.) If anyone knows how to do this and can try it, all I can say is, it works like magic.

Can anyone recommend a web site or several web sites where I can post my question? I am desperate to fix this email program or find one that works for me.

Otherwise, I am going to have to put XP on that machine and give up on Windows 7. It cost me almost $200 to buy that program – I got Windows 7 professional 32 bit thinking I could use the XP function on it for my own programs that I need for my work.

Thank you.

Clint
Thanks for the response – and I agree! Although I never thought of OE as industrial strength. I just figured out how to manipulate it so that it did exactly what I wanted in the absolutely most efficient way possible (fewest clicks, fewest drags, least amount of vertical length to drag anything (used sub sub folders that could be collapsed).

How can I change WLM to meet my needs? I can make registry changes if that’s part of the solution if I know what they are.

K.