Secue,
As Bushfiva says, IE in integral part of the Windows operating system. Its all intertwined so you cannot simply discard IE. Think this was the basis of a court case in the EU.
Back to my question re Thunderbird, If I was at a hotspot in say Singapore, would an email client like Thunderbird retrieve my ISP email from my Australian ISP's mail server via the net? Is this how a mail client actually works? Sorry if I'm asking the bleeding obvious! Thanks for the replies and BNT, ask-leo.com is a good find, I spent hours on his site...
Cheers
Octane