Thunderbird - A Free, Open Source, and Powerful Email Client

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To Bill Nelson -
Yes you can import all your old email from Outlook Express and your Address book too into Thunderbird.

Thunderbird can't import from Windows Live Mail. And, Blackbury will not sync with Thunderbird. Two good reasons not to use.

Used to use Thunderbird until Gmail came out in '05(?). I don't need to bother with backups, don't need to lug machines around, don't need to transfer settings and files to new machines. Now with Google Gears, all the info is also synched to my laptop so I can use Gmail/calendar/tasks/docs off-line.
All my POP3 email for my business is automatically transferred... I can't for the life of me think why I'd ever use an email client like Thunderbird/Express (uughhh)/Outlook, etc.

For about a decade, I have used the basic email "engine" for Thunderbird (even since it was part of the Netscape email application). TBird has been a reliable, stable email application, and these days, that makes it a prized asset.

TBird is not only very solid and easily handled, but an easily-fixed application-- not that it ever needs much attention.

What I like best about TBird is the new anti-spam ("Junk") feature, which makes life far easier than when we had to use filters for each email box. The junk filter is very good at guessing what is sales junk mail and what is subscription or other mail.

And the few times TBird's junk filter threw my good email into a junk folder, I "taught" TBird to correct its error by simply restoring the message (dragging it back to its correct folder). TBird "learns" each time I correct a mistaken junk mail identification, and becomes "smarter" every day.

The nice thing about using TBird is every user can visit one of the TBird forums (from the main menu, under "Help Contents") for free assistance from other users, many of whom are experts.

I’ve recently converted 11 gigabytes Outlook Express data to Thunderbird. The conversion happened without a hitch and was quicker than expected considering the amount of email. The file structure was preserved. Some things did not come across, or came across imperfectly. For example:
+ The read/unread status of email did not come across
+ Message rules/Message filters did not come across and had to reconstructed by hand (not a big deal)
+ The account data was “imperfect” requiring some research and fiddling with all accounts before I could send and receive email. The account data for my wife’s hotmail account was way off.

In addition to getting Thunderbird up and running, there have been a variety of interface and usability issues that needed solving. Things like the emails being sent immediately instead of going to an outbox, emails written in Ariel but being sent as plain text, the option to start up in the inbox was buried and mislabeled, and Outlook identities mapping to Thunderbird profiles (Thunderbird has “identities,” but they are a very different feature than Outlook identities). And many more small issues like these. Thunderbird is working fine now, but it took some research and fiddling before everyone in the family was happy.

== Rob ==

Does Thunderbird do newsgroups, the way OE does???

Yes.

07-Nov-2009

Leo, I'm rather surprised that you didn't mention this photo embedding thingy in the article and then commented on by Judy Currior Jly 4th. It's important to me that pics get sent down the line in the usual O'Ex way ?

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