Hmm. I've never explored the possibility of Mail using HTML messages... I know they generally prefer the rich text thing as HTML email provides the possibility of much viruses and things, but if you really need the background thing then you're probably out of luck. Too bad, too, as Mail is so beautifully simple, with excellent spam filtering.

If you upgrade Office, Entourage seems to be pretty nice, very Outlook-like, even though Office itself gives me the willies in OS X. You could also consider trying Thunderbird, the (free) email client by the people that do Firefox. But that, too, would probably want a memory upgrade, and I'm not certain about it's HTML mail possibilities. And it, unfortunately, does not interact with iCal to my knowledge.

Consumer Reports is completely untrustworthy on food reviews; their tasters' opinions never match mine.

Thanks for the tips Nova. I'll look into them as soon as I finish job #1--the all important memory upgrade.

While this updating process is not as easy as I'd like it to be, I have to say I'm really happy to have this new 'puter.

The screen is so, so nice! (Makes my no-tv-watchin' iMac obsession a bit dimmed tho'. Job #2 will be the external dvd drive!)

Beej, if you decide you like Firefox, the same outfit has a mail app. called Thunderbird [link]

There is a feature list in the next to last paragraph on that page, and it includes "support for HTML mail."

eta: Ooops, NovaChild beat me to it. I saw "Office" and "Outlook" in his second paragraph so I skipped to the next message.

I like Safari as a browser.

Maybe a Buffista can loan you a copy of OSX 10.3...

Regarding HTML mail, please avoid using it if you know the recipient is on dial up. Messages are doubled in size as two versions are usually sent - the formatted HTML and a raw text version. Using background images (especially bitmaps) doesn't help either.

Fortunately, Thunderbird allows you to set a preference for each user as to how they'd like their mail formatted.

Maybe a Buffista can loan you a copy of OSX 10.3...

If only. I'll check out Thunderbird...I'd love using it just for the name!

And Grommit, I understand your concerns. When I send my ezine out, the provider filters for text vs. html preferences. I suffered with dial-up for so long, I really get how irritating mondo-messages can be.

Ok, I'm feeling stupid here, and hope someone here will take pity. I tried to load Literati at Yahooligans, and it says that I am missing Java, although I have Java and it's enabled. I assumed that it meant that I needed to upgrade. I followed the link, and found the instructions for downloading Java for Linux a bit confusing, but followed them as best I can. Something definitely happened, but I'm not 100% sure that everything is pointing where it should. In any case, I still get the error message at Literati: Additional plugins are required to display all the media on this page. After clicking on the Install Missing Plugins link, I get: Sun Java J2SE50. Any suggestions?

If you've got your iPod connected to a Mac via Firewire and the Mac is asleep, does the iPod continue charging? I don't think it does on my Cube....

eta: Libkitty, I remember being confused when installing Java on a Linux box many years ago. I don't remember what I did.... but do you have to tell the browser the path to the Java runtime?