It’s a good idea to check email messages for viruses, spam and other undesirable elements, but doing so usually means first downloading them to your PC, potentially exposing it to harm and wasting time.

A better way to vet email is to preview it while it’s still on the internet service provider’s servers, enabling you to delete unwanted mail from there.

Poptray is a free program that places a small envelope-like icon in the Notification Area and can check a number of email accounts for mail at five-minute intervals. In this manner, you can see who emails are from and even preview messages before deciding to download them.

Click here to find out how to download, install and run Poptray.