The CCITT X.400 Series of Recommendations on Message Handling Systems (MHS) define a distributed message exchange model aiming towards the development of an international mail network by interconnecting public and private networks worldwide. The essential functional components of the MHS Model are the User Agents (UAs) and the Message Transfer Agents (MTAs). Users of the MHS — originators and recipients of messages — request its services through a UA which in turn interacts with the Message Transfer System (MTS). QK-MHS/VM, is an electronic mail system developed at Queen's University under the IBM VM/SP operating system, and is based on the CCITT Recommendations. Design and implementation issues in the development of a remote UA model on a personal computer to be connected to QK-MHS/VM are surveyed in this paper.