Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org.
QUESTION: My wife and I share a PC with Windows Vista and miss the Multiple Identities feature of Outlook Express. How can we get this feature back?
PC CLUB: Windows Mail in Vista does not have identities like Outlook Express did. By default, all E-mail from all accounts goes into the same Inbox. There are four different ways of getting around that:
1. Use separate Windows user logins. That gives total privacy, and is ideal when two different people use the same computer.
2. Use message rules to filter incoming messages into separate mail folders. There is no privacy, however.
3. Upgrade to Windows Live Mail which has separate folders for each account, no rules needed. See http://download.live.com/wlmail . There is no privacy with this setup either. This is the easiest solution unless you desire privacy.
4. Purchase a Windows Mail add-on called http://www.oehelp.com/WMIDs/. It add multiple identities to Windows Mail and costs $14.95. I have not tried this program and don’t know if it offers privacy.
Here are my recommendations:
· If you want total privacy set up two user accounts on the PC, each having their own password. This prevents one user from seeing the other user’s E-mail.
· If you don’t care if the other user sees your E-mail either accidentally or on purpose, download and install Windows Live Mail and setup two accounts. Each account will have unique folders for all E-mail including Sent and Received messages. You must exercise caution when sending E-mail by making sure to choose the correct account when sending.
For help on setting up accounts in Windows Live mail see http://bit.ly/livE-mailsetup. Finally, if you want different identities there is another way. You can avoid desktop applications such as Windows Live Mail altogether by setting up your own free Gmail accounts. This will keep your E-mail both separate and private since you will each have you own password. You can then access your E-mail from anywhere where’s there’s an Internet connection. Of course you can do this with any Webmail program including Yahoo Mail and AOL.
Ed Schwartz is a member of the North Orange County Computer Club. To send in a question, go to edwardns.com and click the Contact Me menu. Archives of previous columns are also on the website.