Submitted by Matt Farina on May 16, 2008 - 8:00am.
I've used apple mail, Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Eudora Lite (that program rocked), Lotus Notes, and have been using Thunderbird for the past week (my macbook is in the shop so I needed something on Linux).
Overall I have no complaints. I can't say the program jumped out at with with some magical impress. But, it does take a lot for a mail program to do that. No client has been able to do that in years.
It has all the main feature people want. The real component that's missing as a full fledged system is full calendars. If I had to choose something other than Apple mail it would be thunderbird.
OK, so that's not a beautiful review. But, I think you get the point :)
I have been using it for years. I access my mail (using IMAP not POP3) from several different platforms - W2000, XP, Linux (FC5), and Mac (OS-X). Thunderbird is nice for this, because it looks and feels (almost) the same no matter what platform I am on.
my only complaint on the mac version is that it dumps all the mail attachments on your desktop when you read your mail. Possibly a config issue but it doesn't really bother me that much.
Definitely worth a look if you want an alternative to Outlook, but as Matt says, there's no calendar or tasklist app built into Thunderbird. (Many would argue however, that that is a good thing)
We recently moved our church email hosting to Google apps and in the process I looked at using Outlook (they were already using Outlook). Outlook couldn't be configured to work well with gmail IMAP, but Thunderbird worked great. I also installed Lightning and the Provider for Google Calendar extensions. That gives me a calendar that is synced with the google calendar and is integrated into Thunderbird.
I also installed Zindus. It is an extension for syncing the address book between gmail and Thunderbird. I am currently having trouble with it saving the connection settings (I haven't really tried to fix it), but other than that it works.
I know you didn't ask about gmail, but I think the configuration options are very capable and I have been very pleased with the extensions available for Thunderbird.
For The Last Week
I've used apple mail, Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Eudora Lite (that program rocked), Lotus Notes, and have been using Thunderbird for the past week (my macbook is in the shop so I needed something on Linux).
Overall I have no complaints. I can't say the program jumped out at with with some magical impress. But, it does take a lot for a mail program to do that. No client has been able to do that in years.
It has all the main feature people want. The real component that's missing as a full fledged system is full calendars. If I had to choose something other than Apple mail it would be thunderbird.
OK, so that's not a beautiful review. But, I think you get the point :)
Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.mattfarina.com
it's nice on multiple platforms
I have been using it for years. I access my mail (using IMAP not POP3) from several different platforms - W2000, XP, Linux (FC5), and Mac (OS-X). Thunderbird is nice for this, because it looks and feels (almost) the same no matter what platform I am on.
my only complaint on the mac version is that it dumps all the mail attachments on your desktop when you read your mail. Possibly a config issue but it doesn't really bother me that much.
Definitely worth a look if you want an alternative to Outlook, but as Matt says, there's no calendar or tasklist app built into Thunderbird. (Many would argue however, that that is a good thing)
Peter Sneesby
Works great with gmail
We recently moved our church email hosting to Google apps and in the process I looked at using Outlook (they were already using Outlook). Outlook couldn't be configured to work well with gmail IMAP, but Thunderbird worked great. I also installed Lightning and the Provider for Google Calendar extensions. That gives me a calendar that is synced with the google calendar and is integrated into Thunderbird.
I also installed Zindus. It is an extension for syncing the address book between gmail and Thunderbird. I am currently having trouble with it saving the connection settings (I haven't really tried to fix it), but other than that it works.
I know you didn't ask about gmail, but I think the configuration options are very capable and I have been very pleased with the extensions available for Thunderbird.
We like t-bird, too
Even though my wife has to use Outlook to sync her calendar and contacts with her phone, we still use Thunderbird for our email (gmail account).
She actually prefers 2 different apps and doesn't clog up her phone contacts with email only contacts that are in thunderbird.