Outlook Express to Gmail transition
 

I'm running Outlook Express 6 on two different XP machines, both connecting POP3/SMTP to my Gmail account. The OE6 on one of the XP machines is set up to delete mail from the Gmail account after it's 30 days old. I read/delete/move mail to folders on both XP machines (I know ... stupid). I need to move away from XP/OE6 and just use the Gmail web interface. I would however, like to copy the mail I have stored in the OE6 folders to Gmail. I'd like to do it in a manner that would preserve the original time/data information. From what I have determined, I need to install Thunderbird on the OE6 machines to pull this off, but the information I've found is a little sketchy. Can anyone confirm that this is the right path to go down, or direct me to a tutorial describing this process?

you need to move away from XP-
outlook 2010 has much more functionality built in-

get out of the dark ages, kill XP

If OE will connect to imap, set it up for that. Move mail from your local machine (fetched via pop3) back to the mail server via imap (drag 'n drop messages). When your imap folder(s) have all you want in them, delete the pop3 settings, or just stop using OE and use the web interface.

If you install Thunderbird (which I'd recommend over any microsoft product) it can migrate all of your local OE stuff into it automagically. You can then do as I described above and set up IMAP in Thunderbird and move your messages around.