The thing with firewalls...like I tell our customers, Kendall, is that things can go wrong and they start to block the connection...Zone alarm is notorious for it...and alot of times even if you have them disabled they still run in the background and block the connection...zone alarm tends to sometimes corrupt the registry, so that you will have no connection even if the program is installed...and then you have to delete the registry keys that are involved...but then I can almost guarantee a connection...

As for alternative email programs, I would go with eudora...as it is free (if you don't mind an out of the way ad) and has all sorts of neat features on it and can be fairly user friendly...and you can also get a manual on it from the same site...one thing though is that many ISPs may not support it...I know that we do not...because we do not provide it...in fact we do not support netscape beyond 4.6...as AOL has taken them over...and they are now a comptetitor...