Don't get hung up over the windows updates
From what you say, the problem is with Outlook
Can you tell us what the actual symptoms of your problem with that are, and what the Outlook error messages are (if any?)
As regards alternative e-mail software, the choice of "free" stuff is limited
Ether Mozilla Thunderbird (with Lightning if you want a calendar
Or VMWare's Zimbra
At present Thunderbird is on the back burners as a project - Mozilla are only doing care and maintenance releases on it, no development. Basically nobody wants to work on programming it
Last edited by Milo Minderbinder; 19th Jul 2012 at 16:51.