^well
thanx for taking the trbl 2 reply. was unable to configure thunderbird to download my hotmail mail (let me reiterate, since my hotmail acnt is old, it is treated as a 'valued' account and hence i m still able to download mail. in fact i stl do it from my ofc comp from incredimail/xp, and then work/reply offline)
so i got impatient

and un-instld thndrbrd. (and no, i dont have winmail

)
so i guess i have to wait for incredimail to issue a vista version ...