Using Thunderbird?
Anyone out there using Thunderbird and have an opinion about it? I'm thinking of switching from Entourage.
Comments
I just switched to Thunderbird a week or two ago from the dreaded Outlook Express (which I'd grown very accustomed to, and knew how to keep secure) to coincide with changing my personal e-mail address and making Firefox my default web browser.
All-in-all it's a very good and full-featured e-mail client. I can't really think of anything that I want it to do that it can't (and if I DID think of something, I could find/write an extension to do it, buwahaha). In addition, it feels a little less "bodged" together than Outlook Express, whose Accounts and Identities and Signatures and many other things seems glued on to an antiquated design. Thunderbird is pretty decently organized once you figure out where everything is.
The big change for me was in the management of accounts, which is the main reason I was still using Outlook Express until now. I absolutely require rock-solid support of many accounts (currently around 10, for me) and Thunderbird handles it nicely.. in fact, the account is the basic unit of organization in Thunderbird. What took time adjusting to is that Thunderbird gives each account its own inbox/sent/drafts/etc folders, whereas Outlook Express gives you one global set of those which all accounts use. Thunderbird actually added an option to a recent release that allows for that behavior, but by the time I found it I'd become accustomed to them being separate. I actually prefer it now, because it really forces me to keep my work/school/personal/etc e-mails separate, as they mostly should be. You can still drag e-mails back and forth between accounts if you want, however, so it really isn't a big deal.
My main gripe right now (which is shared by a LOT of open source software) is the lack of solid documentation.. it's really almost non-existant at the moment. I want to see some docs about all the options available in the preferences file, how to write extensions, and lots of other deeper issues without sifting through mountains of forum posts and newsletter archives. At the same time, though, it shares all the benefits of very popular open source software: lots of extensions and plugins, great security, extensive portability, and a large generally enthusiastic community.
To summarize, if you know even the rudiments of e-mail, picking up Thunderbird should be a breeze, and it shouldn't be difficult to make it behave how you want it to. If you can't, chances are there's either an option in the prefs file (which is very easy to edit with a text editor) or you can find an extension for it or write one yourself. Thunderbird didn't have a problem importing all of my stored e-mail from Outlook Express and I know it can import from several other programs as well, but I'm unsure about Entourage, with which I have no familiarity at all. You'll probably want to check for some kind of plugin for that (assuming you want to import your old e-mail). In addition, I'd recommend just setting up Thunderbird on your machine and trying it while you continue using Entourage. You can set accounts in Thunderbird to not delete e-mail from the server when it retrieves it, so you'll not miss receiving any important e-mail in Entourage while you're trying it. I used both clients for a number of weeks before finally ditching OE.. gives you a bit of time to adapt and make sure it can handle your everyday usage requirements.
Good luck! Let me know how it turns out if you give it a try.
I just downloaded it to Michelle's PC (Win2k) last night and was trying it out; I like what I see, especially the adaptive spam filter and the sorting/threading options. She downloaded it today on her OS X machine here at the office, and I think she's going to give it a try. Too bad there's not a version for our old OS 9 machines.
My one concern is the inability to work with Hotmail. Not that Hotmail is that important...but I'm afraid that without the built-in Hotmail access on Outlook Express, I'll simply forget to check my hotmail account, and then eventually lose it due to inactivity.