Anyone using thunderbird?

frobisher

I've a new PC and am considering going for Thunderbird for my mail. What's it like in everyday use? How good is it at handling contacts/address? Are there any other options I should also consider (free is good!)?

aidan_walsh

Its alright. Its got many of the basics down, though there is plenty I miss from using Outlook at work.

Darkwing Duck

I'd happily sell my soul to be able to use Thunderbird in work again. They switched us to Outlook a while back and its a severe pain.

Thunderbird has a whole heap of cool features, and on top of it its just pretty and nice to use. Has a much friendlier feel than Outlook.

Or maybe its just cos its MicroShaft

frobisher

Does it have a decent calendar in it like Outlook?

marcphisto

It has a calendar extension called lightning which seems to work pretty well.

stipey

try pegasus mail at http://www.pmail.com/

Ruu_Old

Its fairly basic which is why I use it, never checked out any of the extensions available for it though.

dubmick

I have to say I much prefer Outlook. I think you really can't complain about Outlook.

Darkwing Duck

Generally I would forgo anything that requires forking out in favour of something thats free, open, and just as good, if not better. Outlook has just gone too bloated, its way too big to be classed as an email client any more.

On the other hand if thats what your looking for then thats fine, to each his own, but if your looking for something that does exactly what it says on the tin then there are, happily, a lot of alternatives out there....

admiralofthefleet

sorry if this sounds stupid but can i use it for mail in the same way as i use gmail , hotmail and yahoo. it wouldnt interfere with them would it?
i use firefox as my browser so it would probably go well with it??
im not the brightest when it comes to computers so excuse me

Darkwing Duck

No such thing as a stupid question!

Yeah you can use Thunderbird to download Hotmail, Gmail, and probably a host of others. I've never tried to do it with Yahoo so not sure there, but its really easy to configure, Gmail even give detailed instructions for it in their "Settings -> POP and Forwarding" section

aidan_walsh

Hotmail is restricted to Outlook access only isn't it? And even then only to premium accounts.

deadl0ck

Actually, I just checked this out and there is a WebMail extension for Thunderbird.

I just set it up for Hotmail

Ruu_Old

aidan_walsh wrote:

Hotmail is restricted to Outlook access only isn't it? And even then only to premium accounts.

Almost 100% sure myself, same with Yahoo mail.

deadl0ck

Check it out here

Capt'n Midnight

Yeah outlook has lots of nice stuff, most of it nothing to do with email.
So for PURE email it's easy to replace.

For tasks/notes/contact lists/reminders/calander it's a little more difficult to get an all in one replacement.

Technically if you use certain non-oem versions of Outlook at work it may be possible to use them on a laptop at home. BUT this would not apply to outlook licensed through exchange CAL's or any preinstalled copy of Outlook and the exact provisions may vary with version. So I'll say it's possible, but not probable.

Outlook was/is the front end to Microsoft Exchange, so workflow, public folders, address lists, forms etc. and they ALSO do email. IMHO exchange is overkill and overpriced and overcomplicated and just too danmed difficult to sort out when it goes belly up to use just for email.

BTW: if you are using an exchange server, the hour will probably go back on the wrong sunday.

5uspect

I used Thunderbird in work for awhile and loved it. Outlook of course is the standard but I was getting sick of the bloat and the sluggishness, the way the whole program has to freeze just because the server is a bit slow.

The only problem I had was Thunderbird would send pdf files as DAT files to other work addresses (but not external ones) so I ended up going back to outlook during a journal paper review/submittal frenzy a few months back.

I'm tempted to go back to Thunderbird now tho... happy days...