Could anyone reccommed a very simple basic free e-mail service ?

180567

Hi

I wonder would anyone be able to reccomend a very basic simple e-mail service that would work on a old Windows XP computer.

(The computer can't cope with G-mail as its just freezes when it is trying to load the page).



Thanks for any advice / suggestions.

Fysh

You could try a lightweight mail client and configure Gmail or whichever mail provider you want to use within that. TBH they all seem to be making their web UIs pretty resource intensive from the perspective of older hardware, gone are the days of lightweight webmail interfaces like SquirrelMail

FGR

I still find it crazy that a Pentium 4 pc with a freshly installed XP OS can struggle with the most basic of websites. I wonder is too much effort being put into bells and whistles just to make this tech obsolete?

I'm babying the parents computer as it's doing it's best to get on by - but I can remember how blazingly fast it was when XP was the latest OS.

Eric Cartman

Perhaps more ram and a web browser upgrade is whats needed. Ive a few machines in offices still running xp on a p4 chip, sp3, 3gb of ram and firefox , gmail and even flash video sites run well

Fysh

FGR wrote: »

I still find it crazy that a Pentium 4 pc with a freshly installed XP OS can struggle with the most basic of websites. I wonder is too much effort being put into bells and whistles just to make this tech obsolete?

I'm babying the parents computer as it's doing it's best to get on by - but I can remember how blazingly fast it was when XP was the latest OS.

The Pentium 4 as a CPU is between 7 and 15 years old at this point. XP's around 13 years old. The paradigm for website decelopment has changed significantly since they were launched - there's a much greater usage of client-side scripting and rendering in even straightforward sites now, and browsers are correspondingly more resource-intensive. And it's not like this is a new thing - Moore's Law's been around for ages.

I don't think effort is being specifically put into rendering tech obsolete so much as the financial model underpinning electronics & computing development doesn't particularly allow for long-term reusability of systems for the same function. Old systems can still be used for certain things, usually by putting lower-overhead OSs on them.

Given that XP is fully obsolete now (we're now looking forward to the imminent release of the 4th major release of client-side Windows since XP was launched), have you considered trying something like a lightweight linux install with LXDE as the desktop shell?

kippy

Have you tried Chrome on XP? Running gmail, outlook.com etc etc.... plenty free email services out there. If the issue is PC performance youll need to try a few options/configs

greasepalm

all he wants is a mail system i use eircom and when i need to check my emails login with username and password,on dilapidated xp here.

http://email.eircom.net/about/faqs/

Boskowski

Would you not simply install Thunderbird or configure Outlook for him?

Capt'n Midnight

Boskowski wrote: »

Would you not simply install Thunderbird or configure Outlook for him?

I asked a magic 8 ball about this, it said "Outlook not good" :pac:

outlook needs a license.

have you tried yahoo webmail ?

Saipanne

Is Linux not a good option?

Capt'n Midnight

Saipanne wrote: »

Is Linux not a good option?

Correct, it's not.

Because - Please read the charter about unwanted suggestions. :mad:


Also things like Chrome/Yahoo/Thunderbird are cross-platform and could be used on just about any OS so changing the OS doesn't really change anything.
Apart from Outlook which you can only use if you have a license for it - there is a thing in windows called "outlook express" - about the only thing it has in common with real outlook is the name - and OE is possibly the most vulnerable to malware email client out there

In practice if a computer doesn't have the makings to running XP then it's going to have similar problems with most Linux desktops, unless you go to LXDE or XFCE or whatever

janeparker

In my opinion, Thunderbird is best email client as per your requirement.

PropJoe10

Try a more lightweight browser than Chrome, such as Midori for Windows, and see if you can use Gmail. I wouldnt go near the internet on XP these days though, to be honest. Thunderbird also works well.

The_Pretender

Another vote here for Thunderbird. We use it on a work computer with still runs XP. Works not a problem.

Jhcx

Have you tried running gmail in basic html for slow connections. working with xp on a few computers for people who are stubborn to move on. ive noticed Google is trying to push people to upgrade and are making gmail and other google applications harder to use for xp users just cause they dont want to support them any more.

vote for Thunderbird as well