At home we have a 6 yr. old Dell desktop running Windows XP SP1. We connect to the internet via Verizon DSL and MSN Premium, with MSN Explorer browser.
We recently bought a Dell XPS 1350 laptop to take with us while traveling, and I'm a bit confused. It runs Vista SP1. On the road we connect to the internet via whatever WiFi is available. Since the laptop hasn't been used at home yet, I didn't take time to see about loading MSN Premium onto it, nor did I do any configuring to Verizon on it (if I need to?). So on the road I've found that Windows Live Messenger pops up in the lower right corner, and through that I can click on "messages" to get to my email Inbox via Hotmail, which doesn't provide me with my MSN Explorer "Favorites" list and the other things I've become accustomed to at home; but at least I can get my emails and access My MSN. Internet Explorer by Dell is on my desktop, but it requires extra steps and ends up with Windows Live Messenger anyway.
I've noticed that if I try to copy/paste an image into the body of an outbound email, copy and paste an entire received email to a new outbound one, or simply forward a received email to someone, the text goes in the new email okay but the image doesn't. I don't know if that's due to some setting on my computer that needs changing (HTML?) or what, but it sure is a pain to not be able to send photos or graphics to people. Methinks it may be another Hotmail thing, and that if I just had my MSN Explorer everything would work right.
Now, there've been pop-ups on this new laptop since we hit the road saying something about MSN changing everything over to a new web-based thing and junking all others, including MSN Explorer. I've always despised Messenger since it came out since I had trouble with it at first and it slowed down my computer. They keep changing these things on us so we have to relearn stuff and toss what we're accustomed to. Windows Live Messenger apparently has been refined such that it doesn't negatively affect my uses, so I can tolerate it at least. But all this new stuff at once, Vista, new computer, MSN changing browsers or whatever they're doing, Messenger... cheeez, gimmee a break here. So here I am asking for advice.
We're on the road now. Should I try to download MSN Premium to this laptop from Verizon's website, and will that give me access to my customized MSN Explorer features like I'm used to at home? I suppose I'll have to go thru Verizon's maze of red tape to download. Are they actually changing MSN Explorer to something else? And will downloading MSN Explorer resolve the problem of images not copying into outbound emails, or is that more likely a settings issue within this laptop or Hotmail?
Thanks for any help with these frustrations.
