I use pegasus mail (its free and don't suffer from Outlook attacks)
It has four options I find useful.
confirm reading
confirm delivery
copy to self
mail filtering
If both you and you friend were using Pegasus it will probably work well as long as the following setting is enabled:
Tools -> Options -> General settings -> advanced -> accept requests to confirm reading.
Confirm delivery is not guaranteed to work on other mail systems nowerdays though because many mail servers see confirming delivery/reading as an acknoledgment to spam mailers that the e-mail address is working.
The mail filtering rules are good too. i filter e-mail from e-mail address i know (friends/family) to a seperate folder so i don't have to wade through junk to find them and possibly miss some.
http://www.KumKie.com http://bulldog.servegame.com