Have you tried FoxMail ? it was my favorit until I went Ubuntu.
Thunderbird sucks ass
outlook express rocked !!!
EDIT:
infact, sucks ass doesnt do it justice I fricking hate it, only slightly less that this sh*tty windoes live mail that seven came with, and I really ****** hate than
I dont care about it looking pretty, sorting out spam, or any of the other crap it can do, I just want to check my email... and for it to run as fast as possible
the first thing I do whenever I re-install is spend an hour going though every possible option and turning everyhting off, making it look as simple as possible, making menues appear instantly instead of all that scroll out bollocks.... my windows 7 looks exactly like win98.... and thats exactly how i like it