Unbundling Netscape Navigator/Communicator

My institution still gives staff Netscape Communicator 4.77 to use for email. But then they tell people to use IE for browsing. Of course, in practice, the average non-savvy user uses whatever browser opens when he or she clicks a link in an email. So we have a lot of people using NN4. As we are redesigning part of our website, this has become a huge headache. We cannot use any web standards or even well-formed code, because the higher ups insist it has to be Netscape friendly.

Is there any way to to unbundle Netscape Email from the browser (and remove the browser only?) . Alternately, is there any way to force IE to open when a link in NN mail is clicked? Even setting IE as the default browser under file types, Netscape will still use Navigator if you're coming from email.

Why not migrate everyone to Mozilla? The mail client is great, and the browser is standards-compliant. Kill 2 birds w/ one stone.

Trust me, I would LOVE to do something like that. But it is just not up to me. I'm forced to live with what the IT department chooses to do. My question is more, how can I let them use Netscape mail, but at least get them off the browser?