Thunderbird isn't for everyone

by Victor Agreda, Jr. Mar 28th 2006

The other day sister blog TUAW mentioned a series of interviews with Mac pundits and developers about Mail.app, OS X's default mail application. Leander Kahney found Mail would choke on tons of mail, and switched to Thunderbird. And I'll admit, Thunderbird is a fantastic app, despite certain hiccups (POP vs. IMAP comes to mind). With calendar integration, and hopefully later other features, Thunderbird will probably eventually replace my own mail tools. But for now, Thunderbird is a bit of an acquired taste. Leo Notenboom tried switching from Outlook to Thunderbird. And then he switched back. Essentially Leo unearthed a bug that was a deal-breaker, and having only spent a couple of hours in Thunderbird, I wouldn't call this a fair test. Then again, any bug that forces a user to stop using an app is a fair test, but only for that user. Clearly Thunderbird isn't ready for prime time, but it's getting there...

Tags: thunderbird

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

resource said 4:32PM on 3-28-2006

Thunderbird works.

Not perfectly, but it works.
It gives me all my Gmail so I can use it offline.

In that regard it's fine.

Lightning is lacking, and the Mozilla Calendar extensions is under featured but still gets the job done.

When Lightning hits 0.4 or 0.5 and when TB gets 2.0 or 3.0 and gets tabs and full FF compatibility it will be a true competitor to MS.

nogg3r5 said 4:33PM on 3-28-2006

I use thunderbird, I think its as good as Outlook Express, if not a bit better. I hate the way outlook express works, its got no flow about it. I love thunderbird with its RSS Feeds right there next to your email, its brilliant!

Tanner said 4:36PM on 3-28-2006

The only thing I don't like about Thunderbird is that in labels I can only have 5 labels, whilest in Outlook I could have as many as I wished.

Dave M. said 5:35PM on 3-28-2006

His only problem with Thunderbird was one filter issue? That caused him to stop his migration?

Man, either I am really lax or he is really picky. I have been using Thunderbird now for about a year and love it to death. I haven't found any problems with rules, but I don't use rules that heavily. Even if I did, and I found a bug, I would look for a workaround before dumping Thunderbird and go back to Outlook!

With all the potential for evil being installed on my computer due to Outlook using IE for rendering HTML mail, I'm staying as far away from IE and tools that use IE as I can. Of course, setting your email to not take HTML message is also not a bad idea.

Anyway, I think he's being a bit picky.

coffeemonk said 11:05PM on 3-28-2006

Back in '03, the only thing keeping me from using Thunderbird exclusively was the lack of a working TB/Palm Addressbook conduit. Around mid 2004, Palm sync was "close enough," so i made the leap then and never looked back.

Aside from a few minor quirks here & there (none of which were too annoying or caused data loss) I've had nary an issue. I've had much more trouble the few times I've run IE than the thousands of times I've run Thunderbird.

But then, yes, for those with little patience or much heavier usage patterns, it can often be easier to just stick with what you know.

Leo Notenboom said 12:47AM on 3-29-2006

Yes, I'm afraid I am picky. :-) I get a *ton* of email, and have invested a lot of time into my Filter/Ruleset. It's actually pretty key to the way I use email.

"Clearly Thunderbird isn't ready for prime time, but it's getting there..." I agree - it'd definitely getting there. I already recommend it over Outlook Express without hesitation.

And I'm looking forward to eventually switching :-).

Leo

Gianni said 4:11AM on 3-29-2006

I switched to Thunderbird because of its solid and fast IMAP-Integration. My Mailbox is about 500mb - no problem for TB!
Is there another client out there that can compete with TB on this subject? I guess not...

Spliffster said 9:53AM on 4-04-2006

he couldn't set up a rule and failed to mention what he tried and on which version/platform? i guess that's fud.

i can set up rules for any header (Even custom headers) . so basicly i don't see the point.

also, if you are not tied to a windows only environment TB is probably the only crossp lattform mail program with a decent feature set.

i am using it on several nix boxe, windows and osx and it feels the same on all platforms. works without crashing since 0.6.

Cheers,
-S

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