I had a friend bring a new laptop with Windows 8 over to show him how to use it.

I took me a while but I figured out how to bypass all the BS and make it work like most computers. It is so cluttered up if he brought it back today it would once again take me a while to figure it out. This is due to my worn out memory cells as much as the OS.

A couple of things sort of surprise me re the Vista Mail, or Microsoft Mail as it actually is. First I am mildly surprised it doesn't work fine, assuming it is up to date on your computer.

Second, I am surprised you would use a second rate Microsoft mail client. Have you ever tried Thunderbird? It is a easy to use, easy to install client and I have never known of it not working. There are no bells and whistles or decent filters to speak of but short of something like Outlook (comes with MS Office) which I use and recommend, Thunderbird is about as good as it gets, if you want a mail client vs the web app of your mail server.