Configuring a working email client from localhost is quite a chore, I have spent hours of frustration attempting it. I'm sure someone more experienced may be able to help, or they may perhaps agree with me.
If you just want to test, here is a great tool for testing mail locally, that requires almost no configuration:
You need a SMTP server to send your mail. If you have one available which does not require SMTP authentification (maybe your ISP's?) just edit the 'SMTP' ([mail function]) setting in your php.ini file.
If this is no option because your SMTP server requires authentification you won't be able to use the internal mail() function and have to use some 3rd party class which supports smtp auth. e.g. http://pear.php.net/package/Mail/
Using an open source program call Send Mail, you can send via wamp rather easily actually. I'm still setting it up, but here's a great tutorial by jo jordan. Takes less than 2 mins to setup.
Just tried it and it worked like a charm! Once I uncommented the error log and found out that it was stalling on the pop3 authentication, I just removed that and it sent nicely. Best of luck!
For configuration it's easy as Test Mail Server Tool (pratically zero-conf), and it also serves as an email client, with views for the Message (great for HTML emails), Headers, Body (to inspect the HTML) and Raw (full unparsed email).
It also has a Sections view, to split up the different media types found in the email.
It has a super clean and friendly UI, a good log viewer and gives you notifications when you receive an email.
I find it perfect, so I just wanted to give my 2c and maybe help someone.
Sendmail wasn't working for me so I used msmtp 1.6.2 w32 and most just followed the instructions at DeveloperSide. Here is a quick rundown of the setup for posterity:
Enabled IMAP access under your Gmail account (the one msmtp is sending emails from)
Enable access for less secure apps. Log into your google account and go here
Edit php.ini, find and change each setting below to reflect the following:
; These are commented out by prefixing a semicolon
;SMTP = localhost
;smtp_port = 25
; Set these paths to where you put your msmtp files.
; I used backslashes in php.ini and it works fine.
; The example in the devside guide uses forwardslashes.
sendmail_path = "C:\wamp64\msmtp\msmtp.exe -d -C C:\wamp64\msmtp\msmtprc.ini -t --read-envelope-from"
mail.log = "C:\wamp64\msmtp\maillog.txt"
Create and edit the file msmtprc.ini in the same directory as your msmtp.exe file as follows, replacing it with your own email and password:
# Default values for all accounts
defaults
tls_certcheck off
# I used forward slashes here and it works.
logfile C:/wamp64/msmtp/msmtplog.txt
account Gmail
host smtp.gmail.com
port 587
auth on
tls on
from ReplaceWithYourEmail@gmail.com
user ReplaceWithYourEmail@gmail.com
password ReplaceWithYourPassword
account default : gmail
I used Mercury/32 and Pegasus Mail to get the mail() functional. It works great too as a mail server if you want an email address ending with your domain name.