well I vainly tried just about everything that has been suggested here and again I have to say thanks for your support and time.
Now I'm going for a long walk on a short pier carrying a heavy rock - no I'm not, I am giving Gmail a go and after set-up it seems ok. its working ok. thats something I dont say very often these days so I am going to leave you guys and get back to doing some work
Gmail can be set up so that you can use it through an email program. Go into gmail, then go into preferences and look for one about enabling pop/forwarding. Turn that one on, then you can setup your favorite email prog to send/recieve mail through your gmail account.
Oh the feuhrer, oh the feuhrer, oh the feuhrer's nipples bonk!
I have set Gmail up inside Firefox as a bookmark but cannot find preferences anywhere in Gmail. This works as an email service quite well but have not made it my prime email service as yet