Setting up Windows Mail under Vista

by Ross M. Greenberg

Getting Windows Mail to function properly under Vista is easy – especially if you use the Windows Mail Setup Wizard. It runs automatically when you first run Windows Mail. Windows Mail, by the way, Is the Vista replacement for Outlook Express, including the ability to read and post to NNTP newsgroups, something Microsoft’s Outlook product is still lacking.

Fill in the appropriate details for each page that that pops up in the wizard: your name and e-mail address, etc. The type of e-mail you expect to exchange with your Internet Service Provider will generally be POP3 (Point of Presence). Next you must enter the user name and the password assigned to you by your ISP – your machine logs on to the ISP’s machine to retrieve e-mail waiting for you. Make sure to check the “Remember Password” the box on this is screen – as Windows Mail will be logging in unattended on a regular basis. You can fine tune how often your system will check for mail a later.

Windows Mail includes some pretty sophisticated rules allowing very granular control over incoming mail based upon To:/From: addresses as well as the Subject: line and importantly the contents of the mail message itself. Additionally, a mail message can be defined as “Junk Mail” – the individual sender or the sender’s domain (the stuff after the “@”). Message senders can be permanently defined as junk or safe on the same basis. Mail that is permanently defined as junk is said to be “Blocked” as opposed to “Safe.”

When a message is classified as junk it is immediately removed from the Inbox and placed in the Junk Mail folder.

It is useful after receiving mail and giving it some time to process (mere seconds in most cases) to examine the contents of the Junk Mail folder to determine if mail is being processed properly. Each message can be selected and can be considered “Not Junk” with a single click, causing it to be returned to your Inbox to be further processed by your rules.

Just to give you a sense of the effectiveness of the Rules/Junk Mail settings: For a typical user who posts to USENET and does not obfuscate/disguise their return address it would not be unusual for 800-1,000 mail messages to be received each day. With judicious setting, 100 percent of these mail messages defined by the user as undesired can be shunted to the Deleted or Junk folders or other appropriate folder in a totally hands-free environment!

Windows updates the Junk Mail filter on a regular basis through the Vista Windows Update process.

Ross M. Greenberg is a software developer, writer, and a webpage designer — in that order.  He’s been using Vista since forever, initially as an MSDN user and has dutifully upgraded it as it matured. It is currently his favorite operating system; starting off with CP/M through DOS and its various incarnations and Windows with its various incarnations. If you are new to Vista he promises it will grow on you. He loves being on the cutting edge …”