On Fri, 01 Jun 2012 12:13:58 +0100, DavidM wrote:

This is a bit OT but I know that there are people here with experience
of PCs and usually very helpful.

My old XP PC is starting to play up and I'm planning on replacing it in
the next few weeks. Currently looking at machines from the Chillblast
range as they seem to get consistently good reports. A couple of areas
where I'd appreciate and views and/or recommendations:

Version of W7.
Most of the systems I'm looking at come with Windows Home Premium, but
with a cost option to have Windows Professional. Win Prof has XP
compatibility, which I might/will need for some older programs I use
which aren't (and may never be) compatible with W7. There doesn't seem
to be any other advantage to me for Win Prof, but someone may think
differently?

Mail client.
I currently use Outlook Express, which isn't available on W7, so I need
an alternative. Outlook is a possible alternative but has many features
I'll never use (and will cost). Windows Live mail may do the job but I
played with early versions and wasn't impressed with it's reliability -
it may be ok now.

Mandatory requirements a support POP/SMTP and IMAP from multiple
email providers; allow two or more email accounts for different users of
PC with privacy; allow downloaded email to be left on the providers
server (where supported eg Hotmail), allow at least basic filtering to
direct incoming mail to different folder, support dlists or address
groups.

Desire able: allow import of old emails from OE (the wife and I have
quite a lot of emails that we need to retain and have access to; allow
import of addresses from OE address book.

Any advice gratefully received (but I'm not going the Unix route, so
please don't waste your time suggesting this option, though I know that
some prefer it!).

Given what you have said, my advice would be get a powerful PC, install
*nix, install VMBox. Install XP to a virtual machine, and just run the
virtual machine.