[The Jackal]

Thankyou all for your interesting comments and links :

Really sorry Stuart for the link to BackTrack (it's more of a network security tool more than hacking ; - wont happen again). Real hackers - hacking real systems dont post their exploits nor are there any websites.

Overall I must say I am a thunderbird convert and its handling things just fine for me.

Yes wrt the migration to a linux desktop I might try it one day when I have the time and as others have said pda syncing / mobile syncing is really the reason why I also am still with micro$haft but yet again the linux office / syncing suites have vastly improved over the past 5 years.

Cheers