Getting email confirmations

Here is an Interesting thing that I found with Mozilla Thunderbird.
The actual email interfaces as initially developed(RFC and all) allows a mail to get a confirmation as soon it is read by its receiver, back to the sender. But this facility is available in corporate business mail accounts only. The mail sent from free email services like yahoo and gmail don't ask the receiver for any "read confirmations" neither they can reply a "read confirmation" for the mail these free accounts receive.

But here is the thing, I figured a catch to this and here it is. Gmail allows an easy SMTP interface to access and send mails thru its email clients like Thunderbird. so what I do is I just configure Mozilla Thunderbird to receive and sent emails thru my gmail account. Thunderbird has the capability to ask for read confirmation for all the mails sent thru it, and this does the work. so I actually request read confirmation for all my mails, but point to be noted is that "read confirmation receipts" can only be received for mails sent to corporate mail ID's and not to free accounts like yahoo and gmail itself as these don't allow any read confirmations.
Still It solves my purpose, The important mails I send are directly to corporate ppl and I am able to track that , at no extra cost what More I can expect from the free email service. Google Rocks!, It provides complete services to users and finds a complete different channel to get revenue(the ads we see in the sidebar.) Pretty decent enough.
Also Microsoft too offers Windows Live mail client (download here) which can be used to access hotmail(and gmail too) accounts on PC. Effect of competition. Still proprietary so no other email client may use it.


Disclaimer: This is totally receiver's domain dependent, though it has worked for me, but can't say it would work for all domains. If it doesn't work with any domain,Let me knw I will post it here.