Eudora email for Vista -- and some alternatives

Qualcomm has stopped developing Eudora and turned it over to the open source community. That's a nice idea, but I cannot find if there is a non-beta open source version available. I will be buying a new computer shortly, and I cannot find any reference to a Eudora version that is Vista compatible. Delia Venables

The old versions of Eudora are still available from eudora.com/download, and Eudora says 7.1 works fine on 32-bit and 64-bit Vista, except for the help file (Document ID: 2754HQ). I think this is your best bet for the near future. The open source development called Penelope is creating a "Eudora user experience" on top of Thunderbird, which you may not like, and I'm not even sure it's a good idea. You can always download the latest version of Eudora 8 from Mozilla (wiki.mozilla.org/Eudora_Releases) but I suspect it will be in beta for some time.

For most Windows users, Windows Live Mail desktop (http://get.live.com/wlmail/overview) -- an upgraded version of Vista's email program -- is a reasonable solution, while Outlook 2007 generally does the job for business users. Most others will probably go with Thunderbird, so it may just be a question of when you should make the switch.

Of course, there are still plenty of free alternative email programs for Windows. If you want to try a few, they include Mulberry (now open source), The Bat, Pegasus, Pine, Courier and PocoMail. The Opera browser also has an email client