Switching to Thunderbird

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Hello. My question is:

Why do you need a desktop program to handle your personal email, when there are good options such as gmail?

You can manage filters smoothly in this webmail service, you can also export contacts, universal platform as it depends only on the browser, etc.

I understand that work email via POP or IMAP may be a whole different deal. That's why I only ask for personal email.

Offline use, for one thing. Maintaining personal backups, for another. Being solely dependant on a third party for access to your own email is not something I'm willing to do.

MUCH more on that here:
http://ask-leo.com/are_free_email_services_worth_it.html

By switching to Thunderbird, did you also change all your email addresses? For example, if my current email address is "myname at yahoo dot com", and I switch to Thunderbird, does my email address change to "myname at thunderbird dot com"? If not, am I now using two different servers (Yahoo and Thunderbird) to access and send emails instead of just one? Doesn't this just increase the chances of something going wrong?

All my email addresses stayed the same. I just changed which program I use to read email, I did not change any email accounts.

Leo, if you are thinking of using TB with your MacBook Pro remember that TB currently does contain support for spotlight searching of e-mail. There are problems with the requirements that spotlight imposes and the storage format for TB. This support is an open action item for TB. Though there is not a currently available plugin. Spotlight is a very big win on the Mac OS. I have found that it has proved most useful with e-mail searches. If anyone knows of a plugin for TB I would switch in a heartbeat.

I've been using Thunderbird for a while and found that its Anti-Spam capabilities are superb (once properly trained), as opposed to Outlook whose anti-spam filter works best if you switch the names of "Inbox" and "Junk" around.

Deleting messages is simple and logical - the delete key. Much easier to remember and guess that CTRL+D which you said that Outlook uses.

I haven't taken the trouble to find all of Thunderbird's shortcut keys but I find that it beats outlook on practically everything - especially its multiple account support. Outlook has difficulty sorting Incoming and Outgoing messages if you are sending from more than one account, and it seems to automatically switch which outgoing account it uses if/when it encounters a problem.

Thunderbird has none of those problems.

Leo, I've used TB for probably three years, and love it. Why? First, it works, and I like the way it works. Second, the extensions you can add are very helpful. Here's the ones I use: Contacts Add BCC Button 0.0.3; MboxImport 0.5.4; Talkback 1.5.0.8; Attachment Tools 0.5.2. I think you will come to appreciate TB too. Jim Hamm

I used TB for several years and loved it - but it stopped receiving mail the other day. When I called for support (Frontiernet) they said it has a rep of having to be deleted and started over. Under duress, I started using OE again. I may switch back or to another program. OE is left "wanting" compared to TB.

Leo
I've bene using TB about a year and I love it--the spam filtering is good and I like being able to have my email contacts the same on all of my machines!

Is it Thunderbird has recall sent message? i.e. in Outlook.

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