Thanks guys.
Bramble - no matter how many times I uninstall and reinstall it, I keep getting silly errors like "the default mail client is not properly installed" when i click on email links. Then it appears to cure itself for a few days, before coming back again. Sometimes it just locks up on me and falls over for no reason other than me checking for mail. Like you, I've about a dozen accounts for both personal and business reasons and its generally fine - just these little things are annoying me.
Before anyone says it....😎 my machine has no viruses or spyware on it. So I dont know what the problem is, but I just wondered if people knew of a decent alternative : I'll give your suggestions a look at, thanks