It might come as a surprise to many, but there is no bundled email program in Windows 7, which leaves you quite a few options: you can use web-base email such as yahoo, g-mail, or hotmail, or you can download one of the many free email clients available. In fact, Microsoft provides an excellent e-mail client, Windows Live mail, which allows you to access all your different e-mails accounts from a single program.

Windows Live is available for download for free: simply click on the start button of your Windows desktop and type “essentials,” then click on the “Go online to get Windows Live essentials” link. Once the web page opens in your browser, click the Download button and save the setup file in a folder of your choice. Launch the installation file and choose which of the available free programs you wish to install on your computer; you can install Windows Live Mail, Messenger, Movie Maker, and a few other utilities and tools. The installation is pretty straightforward and once you have Windows Live Mail on your PC, you can import your Outlook Express account settings, and configure the program to access your Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo accounts as well.

Instead of using Windows Live Mail, you can download and install any of the full-featured and free email programs that work with Windows 7 such as Mozilla Thunderbird, Eudora, IncediMail, or Opera Mial. All these programs come with features and security settings that will help you stay in touch with your friends and colleagues, get less spam in your inbox, read, delete, archive, and sort your messages and perform any other operation that you can expect from similar e-mail programs.