Wouldn't something like incredimail (http://www.incredimail) do the same thing, but without all the spyware functions?
I was visiting my mother and helpfully unistalled this crappy spyware program called Hot bar from her machine.
Unfortunately, she really liked the jillions of smilies that it let her add to her hotmail emails, and she felt this was worth the crappy pop up ads that it puts in your browser [sigh - i will never fix somebody else's computer again as long as i live!]. When I tried to reinstall the dang thing, it wouldn't work. I think it's their newest release (4.0) is just not compatible with her Win2k system. Blah. Anybody have Hotbar 3.0?
Wouldn't something like incredimail (http://www.incredimail) do the same thing, but without all the spyware functions?
I would also suggest incredimail. It is really a great email program!!! you can do much more with it than you could with hotbar without being tracked.