A free alternative to microsoft outlook?

[Moonshine]

I'm getting a new laptop for the house and i'm trying to avoid paying for microsoft licences wherever possible, so it i'll be going with firefox and openoffice for net and word / excel type programmes

Is there an free, good alternative to outlook? or do i have to buy a copy of this?

I would be looking for smtp/pop3 email compatability, maybe a calender and contacts management. It would be good if i could import my outlook data into it too.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Ta

Gerry

[markyc]

Moonshine, Big CraigD is your man for this ;) This is his field of expertise :approve::approve: It's over to you Craigy boy :D;)

[Moonshine]

I found this link when looking for alternatives

http://microsoft.toddverbeek.com/mailnews.html

any reccomendations?

G

[euan]

Thunderbird.

Made by the same people who do firefox. I use it all the time and think it's fantastic.

[macblob]

I was going to suggest thunderbird aswell
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/

[duncan]

If you've already got a copy of Office on your main PC, the licence lets you use it on your laptop, ISTR.

[The Dogfather]

Duncan is spot on but Outlook Express is also free if you wanna stick with Microshaft

[Gismo]

Outlook express is part of the windows install, so, assuming you have a Windows CD you should be able to add it, it's probably there anyway, look in programme files ;)

[Moonshine]

ta everyone....

i think i'll give thunderbird a whirl and see how it goes.

ta

G

[Mark R]

A great open source equivelant to Microsoft Office is OpenOffice available at http://www.openoffice.org. I only use the spreadsheet part of it since I don't do much else that requires the rest, but it's worth giving a try since it'll cost you nothing to use.

Doesn't do the contact management stuff or e-mail but it has word processing, databases, spreadsheets and a few other things covered.

[sh@z]

Thunderbird all the way!

[Craig]

Thunderbird is what we currently use at work (version 1.0). Much easier to use than Outlook (very like outlook express) but without all the stuff in it you don't need.

fantastic bit of software :D

[john]

Woooooshhhhh over my head I think;)


sounds like thunderbirds are GO!!!!!!!!:D

[Scottie]

I use BP Passport:I:cool:

[lightbody]

I think Outlook is superb. But the main reason I use it is because it is the only thing that allows me to synchronise my tasks/calendar/contacts with my phone.