So I been using Mozilla Firefox for ages and it’s the best browser - that’s a certainty. But what about the Mozilla e-mail client - Thunderbird? Is it a real Outlook alternative ?

In a word. No.

Don’t get me wrong. It is a great bit of FREE software, but compared to the commercial usefulness of Outlook it lacks in some few key areas. Let me explain :

1) Just the other week Thunderbird told me that there was new update available - so it helpfully went off and downloaded the required update - so far so good - unfortunately something went wrong and it wasn’t able to install it. This then became a real problem as Thunderbird wouldn’t open and just got stuck in loop. Luckily about a week or so later it fixed it self and went away.

2) The Junk filter is a little confusing. If you set it to delete junk mail automatically it doesn’t move them toe recycle bin - it just deletes it meaning any Real e-mail that gets auto marked as spam is lost for ever. This could probably be resolved by setting it to move it to a junk folder but still…

3) No Coloured flags.

Maybe i’m being picky. Download it yourself and give it a try - just make sure you don’t depend on it for anything important else you may be disappointed.

Posted on January 12th, 2007 by Alex
Filed under: General