and sophisitication.
Posted on 02/18/2005 12:50:35 AM PST by ambrose
Mozilla's Thunderbird Takes Off Arik Hesseldahl, 02.07.05, 10:00 AM ET
A few months ago, I tried a beta version of Mozilla's free e-mail program Thunderbird. Despite the accomplishments of their Web browser Firefox, Thunderbird just wasn't ready for prime time. It was a little less than stable, and it choked when importing large volumes of e-mail archives from other programs.
Today I'm ready to reverse my previous judgement. In a few short weeks, Thunderbird 1.0, the first official release, has quickly grown into my own personal information command center. I've been using Thunderbird on four machines, two running Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Windows XP and two running Apple Computer's (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) Mac OS X. Not only is it an excellent, flexible and stable e-mail program, but it's also a powerful tool for efficiently keeping up on Web sites that I read regularly.
Let's tackle e-mail first. Setup is easy, even when coordinating POP and IMAP accounts, provided you know the addresses of all the relevant servers for your various e-mail accounts. I used a mail account I maintain with Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) to try the POP access, as well as an account on Google's (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) Gmail service. Both have different settings requirements for POP access, but Thunderbird was perfect to the task. Setup was a breeze also when I tried IMAP access via Apple's .Mac service, though I didn't try it with the office Microsoft Exchange server. But I'm told it works with that no problem.
It's also generally good at controlling spam as well as viruses and worms. As spam messages arrive, you mark them as junk, and they can be either deleted or sent to a separate folder where you can review them later. Over time the program gets smarter and will start marking messages as spam for you. If it makes a mistake, all you have to do is highlight the message and click the "unjunk" button. (What might be nice is a feature that would let you build a custom "white list"--a list of addresses whose messages are never spam--and a "black list"--addresses you never want to hear from again.)
On the virus and worm front, Thunderbird doesn't allow attachments to open automatically from within the program. This has been a constant problem with other programs over the years, particularly Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express.
One feature I didn't dive into the last time I tried Thunderbird was its RSS reader. If you're fond of reading Web logs, aka blogs, or various news sites that are constantly updated throughout the day, then you may already be familiar with RSS feeds. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it's a way to make updates to Web sites available to other programs. I first addressed them here about a year ago (see: "The Coming RSS Revolution"). The entire point of RSS is to speed up your Web browsing, and save you the time of having to revisit your favorite Web sites throughout the day.
Thunderbird adds RSS feeds to the left-hand bar so that updates to your favorite Web sites are readily accessible. Within a few minutes, I'd built a stable of sites I read regularly--from Yahoo! News to the New York Times to Slashdot.org and even our feeds here at Forbes.com--and they all appeared in a folder that looked almost identical to an e-mail folder. In the space where the e-mail headers would usually go was a link to the Web address for the news article itself. The RSS format allows you to either load the entire Web page containing the article directly into Thunderbird, or if you prefer, as I do, you can load just a text summary and then click to open a browser window. You can also set the program to reload the feeds with new updates every few minutes.
What's it missing? A calendar. The folks at Mozilla are, however, hard at work on a calendar application they call Sunbird. It has as yet reached only version 0.2, so I won't be giving it a serious test here for a while.
But since my last review, another of my chief complaints has been addressed not by Mozilla, but by a third-party developer. I've used Eudora from Qualcomm (nasdaq: QCOM - news - people ) on the Mac for years, and as a result have nearly a decade's worth of e-mail archives. (Don't get me wrong, Eudora is still an excellent and powerful program.) During my last test, I found that Thunderbird choked when importing a large volume of old e-mail. I haven't yet tried to import a large volume of mail from another program on Windows, but on the Mac I found an excellent free application called Eudora Mailbox Cleaner, which can take a Eudora mailbox and convert it into the proper format for Thunderbird, quickly and easily.
If you've lately taken to cursing at your current e-mail program, then I suggest you give Thunderbird a try. It's the best thing to happen to e-mail in a long time.
I may try it...so far the reviews have sucked, but this suggests it may have gotten better.
I don't quite understand why the reviews of Thunderbird are bad. It's a great little program. Then again, I don't handle much email, and use it mainly as an RSS reader.
I use it.
I'm happy with it.
I have 9 years worth of Email (I organize it by year in separate folders). It works fine.
I also use encryption for important business Email. It was difficult to get initially setup but once done also works fine.
Nice to know I'm not the only email pack rat.
I have IE, Opera and Mozilla. Each seem to do certain tasks better than others.
Thunderbird works great. Easy to set-up and easy to use.
bump
Ambrose,
I just replaced my win 95 computer with a Mac Mini. I love the Mini and Apple's Mail program works great. Why would I want to use Thunderbird instead of Apple's mail program ?
Thanks,
ED
I've been using it for a couple of months and like it just fine. I haven't mastered everything but it seems to work just fine.
perhaps David Dennis can answer your question; I don't presently own a Mac.
Yeah, but... I really like Microsoft Outlook. And it has a calendar already. And a ton of other things.
So, not being motivated by blind hatred of Bill Gates... why would I switch?
Dan
The only reason is that Thunderbird is less popular, so it's less subject to viruses. But I won't switch. I'll wait until they fix it.
I enjoy Apple's Mail program myself; I haven't tried Thunderbird, so I couldn't tell you.
Many people are just curious about new software, or they have Windows and want something better than Outlook Express.
They may also feel that open source software is morally better than closed software. I like open source software but I don't go as far as they do. The Mac's core operating system is open source, but the Aqua interface is not.
Glad you're enjoying your Mini!
D
Thanks,
I use Win98 in in the lab and XP for my development systems (I program PCs and design test hardware). I like the mini for office work; it is classy, cheap, easy on the power, and does not need to be patched 2 times a week.
Granted it has a few problems, but I do enjoy using it more than my XP system. I really hope it takes off and Apple makes a comeback !!
ED
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