IT Professionals

Thunderbird Still Fluttering Along

Posted by on Oct 9, 2007 | 4 Comments

Reading this about Thunderbird is just sad. The fact is that when I was using Windows, Thunderbird was my mail client of choice as I detest web based email. It’s just a pain to use when dealing with multiple email accounts. Yes, this means Gmail too, despite being better in this regard than most.

Frankly, I think that Mozilla is right to give Thunderbird a home of its own as things were getting fairly cludgy for a time with the developers. And based on what I have been seeing recently, it appears that Mozilla has finally cut the cord, provided some funding and with any luck, we will see Thunderbird morph into something more like Outlook, but without the pretty colors and other fluff that has nothing to do with funcionality.

So this brings me to you. Is Mozilla doing the right thing here? Will Thunderbird do better on its own? Or instead, is the fate of this mail browser now completely doomed? You be the judge – hit the comments section.

[tags]email, outlook, security, mozilla[/tags]

  • http://www.ebookarama.co.uk/blogitmyway Vince Andrews

    Hi, Matt

    Sometimes it can be a very good thing when a product that is becoming cludgy gets a new lease by separating. So Thunderbird may become even more used by people, especially if people keep telling others about how good it is compared to Outlook.

    No doubt, we will have to wait and see as time passes, to see if it is a good idea to split. I seriously hope that it will not dwindle down on its excellence.

    I for one will certainly be keeping a close watch on its future releases and if i think that it is loosing out, i will make sure that i tell them as i hope that other uses will also do…

    Vince Andrews

  • Randy Allen

    No mention was made in the article about Eudora. This makes me wonder, as Mozilla has taken over development of this program. Did it move, too, or is this a move to put Thunderbird in a separate company while continuing to develop Eudora as Mozilla’s flagship email program? That sounds pretty distrubing to me. Only time will tell.

  • Edie

    I have been using Thunderbird ever since Netscape got to cluttered and wonky. The version I’m now running version 2.0.0.6 (20070728) and for what I do it is great but then I’m not doing anything fancy just sending and recieving mail, and newsgroups with Thunderbird News.

    I also have a bare minumum of extentions, and no complaints.
    Edie

  • http://www.don-guitar.com eldergeek

    I don’t like Thunderbird much anyway so it doesn’t matter to me. I prefer Kmail or Sylpheed Claws. Something I do like, very much, is the fact that I have easy choices in Linux. Oh sure, there are all sorts of Windows compatible email clients but each of them has to be downloaded from a different site whereas IceDove (Thunderbird), Kmail and Sylpheed Claws are all available through Synaptic (i.e. two, maybe three, clicks away) on my Debian Etch machine. Heck, if there was a Windows version of Kmail I’d long since have stopped using Outlook Express.