Someone emailed me about Windows Live Mail because they were interested in migrating away from Outlook Express and onto Windows Live Mail (a very much recommended idea).
But they wanted to know the minimum requirements of the software before they migrated over (see below), and they also wanted to know any useful hints and tips before the transition.
First off, I wrote an article about Windows Live Mail in the early part of 2008 which covers the basics. However, there are a few additional points I would like to add now, having done countless installations of it on many different types of PC and for varying users.
When running Windows Live Mail for the first time it will import all of your messages from Outlook Express. It will tell you it is doing this, and in some cases it may seem to take a small age is passing in time to import your messages, but on the whole it won’t have stalled or crashed, you just need to be patient.
Secondly, your old messages might be filed under a folder called ‘imported items’, and not the regular Inbox. Either double-click on the folder to reveal the sub-folders, or look just to the left of the folder icon and you will see that there is little black (hollow) arrow pointing to the right, press it (single-click) and it will also reveal additional folders. This little issue has often court people out.
Also, if you have more than one email account set-up in Outlook Express, you will find that each account will get its own Inbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items and Outlook. Each account’s folders are colour coded.
Don’t forget that there is a pretty good junk mail filter on-board and it may junk messages that are actually for you (also known as a false-positive). If this is the case, just right-click over the message and choose Junk Mail > Add to Safe Senders List.
Lastly, and this is a fairly important point: those who find that there machine is bit sluggish after installation are highly recommended to run Disk Clean-up on their PC, and then run Disk Defragmentation. This should help see an improvement, but those who have a little bit more time, after doing the above, restart your machine and run disk defragmentation again.
Link: Download for Windows Live Mail 2008 from Microsoft
System requirements
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista |
| Processor | Minimum 800 MHz processor |
| Memory | Minimum 128 MB of RAM (256 MB or more recommended) |
| Browser | Internet Explorer 6 or later |
| Internet connection | Internet functionality requires dial-up or broadband Internet access (provided separately). Local or long-distance charges may apply. |
| Resolution | Minimum 800 x 600 (1024 x 768 or larger recommended) |
| (Windows 2003 Server (Win2K3) and Windows XP x64 are not supported.) |
