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 😉)...