He referred to it as Firebird..?

"I decided right there and then that I wanted an e-mail program that would fit my needs. I decided to see what improvements have been made with Mozilla's Firebird. So I downloaded it and installed it with no problem at all."

looks like a typo (the FB thing) or a missed synaptic moment *lol* but overall it's a decent review :)

I didn't stop using Outlook XP, but the more recent Outlook 2003. All I found new and "innovative" was the new three column layout, i.e. "Mail Folders | Mail List | Mail Preview". But Thunderbird had that too, and more, like a powreful spam filter. With Microsoft's pace at improving their client in new versions, they'll have a bayesian filter in Outlook 2010 or something... :-P

I am able to ditch Outlook to a large degree (and do on my home, but not at the office), but for a couple of simple things. One was mentioned - the ability to sync with some common devices. Palm and PocketPC together have a lot of people's calendars and address books in it. It would be excellent to be able to sync these all together. I'll even go one step further and add Hotmail and Yahoo accounts to the mix. If you can somehow provide a method for syncing with those online, you've really got something clout with a lot of users. And for those of you that say that Palm does sync the address book, you are probably correct -- I haven't tried it since it wiped my Palm clean and took over the Palm Desktop a little while ago. It probably has evolved some in past year though, so I really should give this another go.

Secondly, the e-mail client should be able to be tied to the address book and calendar programs. It doesn't have to be by default, but if I have them all installed they should know how to talk to eachother. I'm usually not in favor in suites of software, but this is one case when 1+1+1 = 4. It's very handy to e-mail meetings and have them go into the calendar. It's something I can't really do without because my collegues would wonder why I've stopped showing up at meetings.

Lastly, (oops did I say 2 things? ;) ), I would love a way to export my Thunderbird e-mail. I tried to move my mail from one machine's Thunderbird to another machine's and I ended up giving up after an hour. I think it should have been a simple thing, and it probably was, but I couldn't just copy the mail folders as whatever documentation I could find would state.

I think all these things are coming in time, and I can't wait until they do. It would finally give people a choice about the software (and in a many cases) the operating system they want to run.

[quote]You might be thinking to yourself, "Why Matt, MS Office products are rock solid. How could you possibly have any issues ..."[/quote]

Thinking to myself? To whom else? If you have somehow managed to discover the secret of thinking to someone other than yourself, please clue me in.

I am able to ditch Outlook to a large degree (and do on my home, but not at the office), but for a couple of simple things. One was mentioned - the ability to sync with some common devices. Palm and PocketPC together have a lot of people's calendars and address books in it. It would be excellent to be able to sync these all together. I'll even go one step further and add Hotmail and Yahoo accounts to the mix. If you can somehow provide a method for syncing with those online, you've really got something clout with a lot of users. And for those of you that say that Palm does sync the address book, you are probably correct -- I haven't tried it since it wiped my Palm clean and took over the Palm Desktop a little while ago. It probably has evolved some in past year though, so I really should give this another go.

Secondly, the e-mail client should be able to be tied to the address book and calendar programs. It doesn't have to be by default, but if I have them all installed they should know how to talk to eachother. I'm usually not in favor in suites of software, but this is one case when 1+1+1 = 4. It's very handy to e-mail meetings and have them go into the calendar. It's something I can't really do without because my collegues would wonder why I've stopped showing up at meetings.

Lastly, (oops did I say 2 things? ;) ), I would love a way to export my Thunderbird e-mail. I tried to move my mail from one machine's Thunderbird to another machine's and I ended up giving up after an hour. I think it should have been a simple thing, and it probably was, but I couldn't just copy the mail folders as whatever documentation I could find would state.

I think all these things are coming in time, and I can't wait until they do. It would finally give people a choice about the software (and in a many cases) the operating system they want to run.

Darn refresh button.

Thunderbird is a nice email application. Can't use it at work though since it doesn't connect with Exchange Server. Also it doesn't support Outlook scheduling with Calendar features. The Mozilla Calendar project is coming along but the lack of Exchange server support in that application will also make it impossible for corporations to adopt. When all these features are supported then I could switch while at work until then I must continue with Outlook regrettably.

I hate the three pane view of Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, and other e-mail clients.

I hate it! I hate it!

Right now Thunderbird is too slow, but it is going to get faster as we get closer to 1.0. If Thunderbird had an option to create a non-three pane view, then I would switch to Thunderbird from Pegasus.

Let's not just copy Outlook. Let's surpass it.

Although there are plenty of posts that suggest you can import ThunderBird's mail into other email clients (because its mbox format), I have yet to succeed with any other email client. Eudora wont recognize them, Outlook (Express or otherwise) doesn't have a clue, Incredamail gets lost, Mailcommander doesn't recognize the file format, Intelligent Mail Box lacks the where with all to even get to the point of figuring out how to import anything let alone actual mail. If I was a bit better at programming I'd just write a nice little quick converter to convert the ThunderBird mail files to TAB or Comma delimited, or even (sorry) MS Access Jet Data.

Still wishing...

Just started using TB 1.0 as replacement for Netscape 4.7, which was starting to not be able to read too many messages. In the past, when I travelled, I used a laptop to do my email and any email I wanted to keep I put into a special folder. When I got home I copied that folder into the mail directory on my desktop. When I try to do this with TB I get "access denied - the file is either read only or currently in use". I have gone into properties and unclicked "read only" for those folders I want to copy and replace but it has no effect - it appears to uncheck it but when I open properties again it is checked as read only again??

In Mozilla's knowledge base I found this: "If you want to transfer a mail file to another Mozilla profile or another installation of Mozilla, simply put the mail file into the other installation's Mail folder". It seems to say take a specific email from my laptop and transer it to the folder on my desktop but I have no idea how to do that short of re-emailing it to myself.