Switching To Mozilla Thunderbird!!!
After delaying it for 2 month, I finally got some time to check out Mozilla’s Thunderbird. And, loved it: it’s slim, it’s fast, it’s user loving. It’s almost as good as Firefox itself. I have used Microsoft’s Outlook for almost 5 years now,. but fortunately it ends here. Check out some of the Thunderextras you get with this client:
- Built-in RSS Capabilities: in addition to being your email program, thunderbird can also be your Feedreader. That’s 2 in 1.
- Spell check as you type.
- Thunderbird Extensions: This is actually my favorite one. Like firefox, Thunderbird lets you install various extensions bringing additional features to the program. EX; attachment files autozip, to do lists, skype integration, calendar, currency conversion and lots more. Which extensions to install depends largely on your needs, check out MakeUseOf recommended extension list here.
- Themes: lots of themes and lots of ways to customize it’s appearance (colors, buttons, font, etc.).
- Adaptive Junk Mail Filters: each time you mark a message as spam, Thunderbird learns from it and improves its spam filtering.
- Smart Folders (Saved Search): Let’s say you want to have permanent and instant access to all your emails meeting particular criterion (ex; all emails that contain ‘bank’ in the subject line) without moving them to a different folder. You can do it using ‘Saved Search’ (go to File->New) feature that creates so called ’smart folder’, every time you click on it, it checks existing and incoming messages for provided criteria (ex; all emails with ‘bank’ in the subject line) and displays ones that match. This happens so fast that you won’t even realize it. Smart folder isn’t a real folder and doesn’t store any emails, it’s a virtual folder which automatically runs required search query whenever it’s opened. More on Saved Searches here
- Anti-Phishing Protection: Thunderbird also protects you from increasingly common email scams (aka “phishing”) which try to fool you into handing over your login details or other personal information. It’ll alert you when it thinks a message might be a scam. Anyone with active eBay or PayPal account knows what I mean.
Additional Links:
Plus you can sync Thunderbird contacts with Gmail – zindus.com
I switched from outlook to thunderbird. It works ok, but is way slower to check email, to open my email folders, and now will not open because it believes another copy is running in the background that is not responding. Even after a reboot. I dont find it to be ‘that great’ like others find it.