I'm with you on FireFox blocks popups by default, and the way it handle's passwords is excellent. ThunderBird has a great built in junk mail filter. I switched a while back, and I've never regretted it.

Just to further clarify, messenger works with the "net" command. If you open a command prompt and type"net send /domain:microsoft Hello"It will send a message to every computer in the microsoft domain. No, it won't work with the real MS :)You need the messenger service to be able to recieve these messages. Turn it off on your home computer. Even most domain computers don't need this- there are now more advanced ways of communicating :)