I am creating a new SSD drive for my mothers computer who lives interstate. In order to have everything she needs I was looking at Libre Office as an alternative. Does it have an email client such as outlook or outlook express or an outside software that is compatible with it. Really need an answer quickly please, as mum has been without her computer for some time now and she lives in a country town with no internet cafes. I will be installing windows 7 as she is familiar with it.
I don’t know. If it were my mother I would want s-i-m-p-l-e. So I think the easiest is no email client, but rather use something like a gmail account via a web page. Then you only need to set up a browser which she can use two ways. Thunderbird is great, and I use it all the time, but not simple really.
The email client I am using for many years now is Thunderbird. It comes with a well-featured calendar/diary . As I did not use Outlook Express (or Outlook) for many years now, I cannot do any comparison myself, but there is this one e.g. You may also want to read this wiki page and this article.
(I personally don’t worry about integration of an email client. I virtually never see a reason to directly mail a Writer document e.g. My Thunderbird is a PortableApp on an USB-stick while I am using a LibO installed on Win 10 for everyday.)
Thunderbird is also my email/PIM client of choice. It is cross-platform, powerful and a very mature program to handle emails. IMHO, it is superior in many aspects compared to MS Outlook, in other aspects it lacks features (e.g. if connected to MS Exchange Server). Please see a comparison table here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:Mozilla_Thunderbird-_Microsoft_Outlook
Alternatively to Thunderbird, there are Kontact and Evolution. If you just look for an email client (without calendar etc.), there are many more alternatives.
Odd, last time I heard Thunderbird was dead, but the site and Wikipedia implies it’s all still going.