As to Sync Toy not being current and having been dropped here is my understanding but don't take this as absolute fact. It is just a story that I have heard. Sync Toy was not directly developed by Microsoft but rather by a couple of Microsoft employees in their spare time. Microsoft felt it was worth publishing but as a free product as it was not a Microsoft development. The actual authors left Microsoft around 2009 hence the loss of support and/or updates.
I also miss Live Mail but found a decent replacement in eM Client. It is free if you just have one or two email accounts. To handle more than two accounts it is not free. Bbarry and I both use this client and are happy.
https://www.emclient.com/One of the things that I really like is that you usually just need to enter the email password and account. It will then poll the email server requesting required settings. If the sever supplies the info (seems most will) it automatically sets up the account. It was even able to automatically setup the three accounts I have through my hosting.
<edit>I was looking for something else and tripped across this article. It may be of interest.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/10/a-nice-software-surprise-better-then-synctoy-and-an-update-from-david/