Thunderbird Mail Client
I have been a Microsoft fan for nearly 20 years now. I have never bought into the arguments and the debates about Microsoft being a “Evil” company and so on. I felt Microsoft was smart in the 80’s and 90’s and built an empire on making a very “nerd” like world into something the common person can use. I have now been an IT Manager for nearly 5 1/2 years now and I have been using Microsoft products for our company. In the last two years, I have begun to get frustrated with Microsoft. The Security issues, the lack of tabbed browsing in the Internet Explorer product and Outlook becoming such a complicated product with pretty much the same features since 2000.
I began using Firefox Browser about a year ago and I have not turned back since. I love it. Very flexible, pop ups are virtually non existing and the extensions and add ons are very useful and easy to use.
I have just downloaded Thunderbird. This is a full featured mail client which for the most part to the common user, would relate and work just like Outlook in basic form. It is easy to use, the application is stripped down and does not try to be an all in one product.
I have noticed you can import your Outlook client settings easily like Firefox does for Internet Explorer. Also, Thunderbird works with Active Directory for exchange server access. I am going to test this thoroughly and possibly use this for now on. I think for a company that does not want to spend lots of money on licenses, this may be a viable option!
mrscrumley said
am March 28 2007 @ 8:43 pm
What kind of spam filter does it have? Do you know if there is a calendar extension for it? I use the calendar and email in my Outlook a lot.
Rob said
am March 30 2007 @ 11:34 pm
Here is some information on the spam filtering;
Thunderbird uses Bayesian filtering to classify junk mail, which is a system that requires some degree of user intervention and training (see the FAQ on the next page for an explanation of how Bayesian filtering works). In order to train Thunderbird to weed out spam, you have to manually mark messages as Junk by either clicking the Junk icon or going to File | Message | Mark | As Junk. But the important factor to remember here is that you also need to mark your “good” messages by going to Message | Mark | As Not Junk (note that no icon is available for this in the toolbar). That way, you train the filter on both ends and ensure that a better percentage of spam will be captured.
Thunder Bird does not have a calendar feature like outlook. Thunderbird is a stripped down mail client that only does mail. If you want Calendar features, look for Sunbird. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/
Cass said
am April 17 2007 @ 9:47 am
I switched to Thunderbird some time ago, and much prefer it to OE. Now, I am off to check out the sunbird Rob mewntioned.
Matthias Köbrich said
am June 19 2007 @ 7:06 pm
that´s what i´m talking about. firefox and thunderbird rule.
on my blog there are a few interesting add-ons. maybe you´re interested.
and i´m also writing a post about saving emails with thunderbird at the moment.
nice blog by the way
matthias