where in mail's preferences can i make it so i get a confirmation email when my emails i send out are read. I know windows has this but i can't find it on my mac at all. is there a plugin which would do this please let me know.
I don't think this is possible. I think there have been some plugins at one time that either didn't work well and/or stopped being developed and are thus not compatible with Tiger.
You might want to have a look at this article, but be sure to read the comments all the way through. It appears to enable receipts for every e-mail you send and responds to everybody who sends you mail, including spammers. I'm not sure if these hints can actually be turned into a functional tool or not though...
If you get Thunderbird you can get confirmation that a message has been delivered, though not read. I don't know any similar functions in Mail, but there might be some Mail bundles that does this. You'll just have to search around (or follow the tip from the post above )...