Comments on: Mozilla Thunderbird Lookin' For a Little Respect

By: kOoLiNuS

kOoLiNuS — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:38:07 +0000

… which isn’t bad, anyway ;-)

By: Leonid Mamchenkov

Leonid Mamchenkov — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 05:23:22 +0000

I never particularly cared for Thunderbird. I mean, I’m glad a nice open source alternative exists and all, but me personally I never managed to use it.

Back when I used to use a desktop email client, I couldn’t find anything as fast and flexible as mutt. So it was my choice for several years. Then I switched to Gmail and I’m prepared to pay a little price of lesser flexibility for all the other features. I’m not going back to desktop any time soon.

2 kOoLiNuS

B) webmail is fake mail. We have to think globally and globally free, or affordable, or quick internet connections ARE NOT a common good. Even in 6 of the 8th of the most industialized worldwide nation. So they work nice for a niche of people, but to other people ?

I see your point. And it makes webmail even a better option (I am not in the USA, and I leave outside by native country for a few years now):

- Email “dependability” is tightly related with Internet access speeds and prices. Email is not a service on its own, but a part of the broader web experience usually (am I wrong?). The more people use the web (IM, web services, etc), the more they rely on email – they get more contacts, more messages, and so on. So the more expensive/inaffordable is their Internet access, the less they use email anyway.

- Localization-wise, I have to say that webmails are usually much better done than desktop clients. Maybe because it is so much easier to improve translations of web applications (just edit a .php file usually) than desktop clients (recompile?).

- Support-wise, webmail is much easier. Maybe in the US or other “top technology” countries everyone knows how to configure an email client, but for the rest of the “regular” people it is much easier to just sign up for a web service and use web browser – something that they are already familiar with.

Anyway, this is how I see things…

By: christen

christen — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:18:57 +0000

I’m on a PC and definitely prefer Thunderbird to other desktop clients, especially for my work email. While there is an available web client to access my work account on, it is really a poor application that I only use in emergencies while traveling.

What I would like is to see tagging implemented more fully into Thunderbird.

By: Khurt

Khurt — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 13:20:33 +0000

Your’re Web Workers and you use a “thick” email client? I use only web based email clients, word processors, spreadsheets etc.

By: kOoLiNuS

kOoLiNuS — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 13:06:05 +0000

I’d like to add my thoughts on the topic.

A) since the annual incomes of the Mozilla Foundations I’d like to see Thunderbird grow within it. Yes, more visibility and efforts to fill the gaps would be *really* welcome. The plain “sourceforge”-like approach scares me … I can see the project die in a million fork immediately after the launch!

c) Google is an USA based company, bounded to their laws and some of them are sometimes a bit “too much” in terms of respect of the privacy of a person or a company. Would they assure me black on white the absolute privacy of “my” email I would rely completely on them … but as for now I’ll let them only manage my public mailing lists stuff. Private things on private server.

Ciao !

By: Edgar Quintero

Edgar Quintero — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 19:51:23 +0000

I still can’t make the transition to webmail. I have several different e-mail accounts and it’s a pain to switch back and fourth from window to window.. or to have around 7 firefox tabs open for each account. I only use evolution right now… Thunderbird is really nice but I like how evolution integrates into my OS, plus the calnedar, taks, memos, and what not… I wish thunderbird could do all that evolution can do!!! *SIgh*

By: JTPRATT's Blogging Mistakes

JTPRATT's Blogging Mistakes — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 18:24:32 +0000

I’ve used Thunderbird exclusively for quite a few years now. I think they should promots it quite a bit more, and I’d like to see many more 3rd party plugins as well. About the only complaint I have is that they don’t make it easy to migrate from one version, or particularly one computer to another. They should be some kind of wizard “export all my mail and folders now” into a zip file or something, and then you could just seamlessly import it on another pc and have your email instantly configured.

As it stands now, you have to read a bunch of forum posts to figure out what folders to save and where to put stuff to migrate it your mail manually.

By: Brian Carnell

Brian Carnell — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:29:31 +0000

“Well, look, as someone who has been using only webmail for the past 2 years, I can tell you that no one I knows personally uses a desktop client anymore.”

Ugh. I don’t know anyone whose exclusively using webmail. Frankly, webmail products either a) completely suck once you get large volumes of incoming e-mail and/or b) the ones that don’t suck involve trusting third parties who don’t necessarily deserve that trust (such as Google).

I’ve used only Thunderbird since the early beta releases, and its nice to have an OS alternative when everyone around me is using Novell Groupwise and/or Outlook clients. Yuck.

By: john

john — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:24:11 +0000

@Diogenes

I think you’re right that Outlook is the best “all in one” client out there. But why have an “all in one” client at all? I prefer having separate calendar, contacts, to-do, and email applications that can talk to each other and integrate, but any one of which is replaceable. Outlook locks you in.

On the other hand, the way OS X does it, you have separate applications that are not really separable. Mail integrates really well with iCal and Address Book, but you have to take them as a whole. So who knows.

By: Ericson Smith

Ericson Smith — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:54:06 +0000

Well, look, as someone who has been using only webmail for the past 2 years, I can tell you that no one I knows personally uses a desktop client anymore.

The writing is on the wall, and the good folks that ran this project know it.

Outlook still has its place in the corporate setting, but for the vast majority of people, gmail, yahoo and hotmail is enough, so Thunderbird (as good as it is), will never get traction against outlook.

Sure, there are some disadvantages against webmail, but the advantages are pretty compelling:
* Available anywhere you go
* Consolidate all your mail into one place (gmail, yahoo)
* Managed and updated by someone else

I can tell you, as a small business owner, I used to run my own mail server. No more. This is just one of those pieces that is ripe for outsourcing, whether to a party like webmail.us, or gmail. Its just not worth the headache.