Best. Email. Client. Ever

Thanks guys!!!

I began using it when it was Minotaur and I never looked back since then.
Excellent program, great work of the developers.
Looking forward to see some improvements for newsgroups in 2005 :-)

"the next round of Outlook viruses"

Assuming there is such a thing... as far as I know (I did have a look myself, and I haven't seen anyone else), there hasn't been a widespread virus that propagated specifically through Outlook since the first half of 2003. All of the current email worms rely on the user deliberately opening an executable, something that's actually easier to do in Thunderbird than in the latest versions of Outlook and Outlook Express.

Your statement isn't actually wrong, but the junk filtering and RSS features are better points to sell Thunderbird on, IMHO, rather than knocking Microsoft's crappy security history in a time before Thunderbird even existed.

doh... that text in brackets should have read "I haven't seen anyone else mention one".

Michaell, a large number of people don't have XP and therefore will not get access to the security improvements in the SP2 version of OE. So Thunderbird security features should be pushed as an alternative for that demographic.
While a lot of viruses have their own SMTP engine they still harvest addresses from the address book to spread, i see a lot of bounce messages and virus attempts @ my workplace that have faked from addresses from other internal staff that have not originated on our network.

michaell: i don't know if you've heard of this guy, but he reckons he's spotted one.
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/007185.html

just offering a link, i know very little about it myself. anyway, back to the theme: 2 million! woo!

DWykes - they don't need XP SP2 for the changes to the email clients. They were introduced in IE 5.5 SP2 and Outlook 2000 service pack. I'm sure there are still people running IE 5.5 or Outlook 2000 without updates, but then I'm sure there are still people running Mozilla Suite 1.0 as well.

db - Ben Goodger's post doesn't actually say he spotted one. He mentions two specific worms that don't, and then the next sentence talks about "these worms" which do. That whole post contains a bunch of hand-waving about Outlook, alongside the (I'm sure real) effect of the emails worms blowing up his mailbox, but doesn't actually make a connection between the two.

This ranting is just about the side issue of course - Thunderbird is a good email program and it's great that it's hit 2 million downloads :)

TB is the best email ever. BTW, I got this story through TB's kick-ass RSS feed. Thunderbird rules. The only thing that I would like to have a "Send Later" and actually be able to pick the date/time when to deliver. That is, literally, the only other feature that I actually need; otherwise, TB has me fully covered.

I install Firefox and Thunderbird on all of my friends computers and every computer I work on. BILL GATES you can't beatit!! People are trying it and LOVING it, and as long as their trying it they will continue to tell others!!! IT guys like me will continue to tell the unknowing people out their about Mozilla and the cons of Microsoft products!!

I too use Firefox / Mozilla at work and home.
Our company 'tuned' version of XP makes IE work erratically at best!
Mozilla or Firefox works much better through the proxy server.

I can't use TBird at work though as the proxy setup won't allow it access.
I do use it at home and am very pleased with it.
About the only thing lacking for me is tha ability to forward mail with a rule(in Outlook speak).
Sure, there are rules, but not one that does that.
If I've missed something somewhere, someone please let me know :-)

Great stuff
Colin

While I'm not an ubergeek, I certainly appreciate the features of the T-bird client. I especially like the labeling and color coding feature. I actually look forward to coming home and reading my e-mail at the end of the day. I can't wait for the calendar project to reach full release stage!

I used thunderbird and loved it. The only reason i cant switch from outlook because of sync. with my palm. Somebody please develop a plugin and i'm switching instantly.

P.S. - Keep up the Great work

Or maybe that's 1 user who downloaded 2 million copies =p

i use thundebird since version 0.4 and i don't have any problem with it. thanks to the guys that created it

I know what the effort must have been to get to this day, congratulations,
2 million can't be wrong, and it won't stop @ 2 million,
ty, it makes me believing again, and now I'm praying 4 justice, again,...

I'm using TB since some time and especially with the RSS and news integration, making it a great "asynchronous messaging centre". Thanks to all who contributed!

I do however feel uneasy with the PR-style cheering. Too many weird and erroneous assumptions, that really contradict/undermine the more modest and thorough approach of the product.

2 million downloads is not the same as 2 million Outlook users switching, or even 2 million people. I'm not switching from Outlook but from TheBat, and I miss quite a few 'power features'. I used RSS tools before, it's not TB that opens that "new and exciting world" for me. Maybe I'm the only one, then your 2 million count still holds, but not the line of reasoning :-)

Oh yeah, and for the extremely stable and well-tested thingy: TB 0.7 has so far been the only application that crashed my Windows2000 machine, and consistenly did so. In general, I think the essence of the test methods of M$ and Mz/open source is not that different: once it's reasonably ok in the labs, find a zillion people who will buy/download it, and they'll tell you what's wrong with it.

That said, I am a fan of the product, the logo, and the other technical merits such as cross-platform, and extensions. And yes, let's make 2005 a great year for products like this!

2 million downloads doesn't mean 2 million users.

it probably means more - many IT people download it once and install it x times - or maybe even let people download it from their servers (that happened a lot with firefox 1.0).

2005 is a great year - thank god.
Magganpice

Or it could mean fewer! I've downloaded Firefox loads, as I have move from computer to computer at work! It's probably just a couple of hardcore geeks downloading it over and over and over and over...

Franco

yeah for the 2M!!!!

thunderbird is a great email client, i've been using it since version 0.7.
the fact that the same interface exists on both the linux and windows world is exellent. i'm sure a lot of people that use linux at home use win at the office so they will appreciate this.

anyways, hopefully during 2005 the guys from thunderbird will come up with great code, ideas and feature. particulary a better calendar add-in

thank you all of you at the mozilla/firefox/thunderbird teams for making great software

Hi there, I thought some feedback from somebody living in Europe would be welcome... I'm using Firefox & TB over a year now, very satisfying pieces of software. the only thing: they start up quite slowly ( I know that's because they are not integrated in the OS, but perhaps somebody can tell me a trick on how to change that ? )

best regards, romano from Duesseldorf / Germany

this is getting to be evangelism and a blind sycophancy:

1. menus and under the hood options are differently implemened in linux than windows. data storage format is identical, this doesnot make the program itself cross platform, but the data manipulation alone.

2. windows download is half the size than that for other platforms. this clearly indicates that most of the downloads would have certainly been for non-windows platforms. of the 2million, how many are for windows?!

3. tb has a lot of bugs and to-do-improvements, and they keep blaming the suite codes that underlie the tbird code, as such saying that "most of the bugs in tb are in effect that of the suite".

4. a lot of people in newsgroups, myself included, have tried thunderchicken and firebadger in vain and have returned to the suite.

let us be realistic and control our adrenalins. the chicken and the badger have a long way to go. it is ironic that those messaiahs in mozilla dot org are trying to kill the seamonkey infavour of chickens and badgers!

I am writing here cause I haven/t found any more place to. That's what the topic of this letter is: how to improve firefox v1.0. I got a lot of requests so please pay some attention to them

1. The speed of firefox. when it opens, it requires about 6 seconds on my configuration (amd athlon 1800 MHz, 128 Mb RAM) which is really irritating. I've tried to open firefox on the other computers, same result - loading for ages. The web-page opening is still very good, much faster than explorer. but you know, people call the opera the fastest browser no earth. Why aren't you said to be fast, too?..

2. Web-page viewing. To my surprise, it's really bad looking at some pages & sites. Internet Explorer is standard in page viewing cause everybody uses it, you must view the pages as IE does! cause people will think of firefox as a junk browser which can't even view pages normally. So please correct that.
P.S. firefox doesn't support WMF file format, which is sometimes used on the web pages, while IE does

3. Toolbar (or whatever it is - the bar where back, forward and home buttons are shown). of course it is much more powerful than previous mozilla toolbars, but still I would hav liked to see in next firefox versions EDIT button. I really need to get this button to open page in html-editor quickly. there are other people, not only me, who would wish to have that in firefox.

4. Javascript support. That's where firefox is a complete failure. there are a lot of JS scripts not supported by firefox, but IE still does support JS. if you want to be better than IE, you must work on JS problem really hard.

thank you very much. in fact firefox is a very good browser, but still these changes would've been good for it.
P.S. sorry for my english. (cause i am from russia!!! =))

I have used Thunderbird on the Mac since .6 or .7 and it is definitely the best email client I have used yet and I have tried quite a few. The Mac version is very important too because Apple Mail.app is not stable enough and cannot render html well enough for my needs. I also use NVU for my main web page editor since .6 and I have used Firefox and Camino regularly since .6/.7. We need some logos to put on our web pages - I can't recommend Camino or Firefox to everyone on the Mac platform until they fix some major bugs, but Thunderbird is definitely ready for primetime. I am looking forward to the calendar integration - I use Sunbird too when I need to check dates.

I work in Dublin City University in Ireland and Firefox is part of the image applied to all student PCs and Thunderbird to all staff PCs.
That's a lot more users for one download.

thanks guys!!

i searched for an appropriate replacement to ms outlook and what i found was MUCH better than outlook! i love it and don't understand these fools still using outlook, getting viruses and a having an unnecessary bloated incoming folder..

you keep open source alive!

i forgot to mention that in my company, we're applying firefox to all our worker's PCs and this is is done in all our branches! and in this year it's also our plan to replace outlook with thunderbird.. you see, you did a great work!

greetz from germany!

Tim, that's great to hear! Can you tell us how the Firefox deployment is going? How large of an organization and how did you all roll it out. I'm always interested in hearing about the problems and the successes of deployments at companies and organizations.

--Asa

when, oh when will these people realize that there is a WORLD of difference between the mighty MS Outlook and the measly, lamebrain excuse of an email client called Outlook Express?!? It's not THAT difficult, is it? Just mention the program by its true full name! You don't brag to your mates that you have "_a_ Dodge" (lest they suspect you have a 1973 vintage pickup truck falling apart), oh, no, you scream it in their face : "I have a TWO-THOUSAND-AND-FIVE DODGE VIPER ESS-ARR-TEE-TEN CONVERTIBLE WITH A FIVE-HUNDRED-HORSEPOWER EIGHT-POINT-THREE LITER VEE-TEN!!!" So, what's the big deal with calling Outlook Express "Outlook Express"?

(Oh, and tell ya what : if Tim's company - that happens to be large enough to have multiple branches - can easily replace the REAL Outlook on users' machines with T-Bird without totally breaking the workflow of the company... Oh well, that company has much larger problems than choosing an email client, really!)

P.S. The day T-Bird will be able to match and exceed Outlook (AND talk to Exchange!) I might just need to buy myself a flak gun and mount it on the roof. 'Cause there'll be pigs flying all over the sky!!!

Perfect email client !
Thanks for the great work guys. I am pushing all the friends to try it out. I have used outlook, lotus notes and few others, and by far Thunderbird is *THE BEST*

PLEASE fix the bug that keeps .tif email attachments from opening in Thunderbird. That's the only reason I must keep OE handy....My faxes all arrive by .tif attachment & I can't open them with Thunderbird :-(

I'm actually a paying Eudora user at home and have been using Thunderbird on my work PC. My reasons for moving to Thunderbird are:

1) TB is an e-mail program, doesn't try to be everything.
2) Relatively compact distribution & installed size
3) RSS feeds are fantastic. Reduces my need to troll web sites.
4) Filters are nice but also common. Views are great. If you haven't discovered them, do so.
5) Open Source means my Linux boxes can run the same program in the same way.
6) Kickin' icons in the Firefox/Thunderbird/Sunbird suite.
7) No cost, and I'm not supporting Microsoft, TW-AOL, etc. etc. I feel like I'm supporting the people.

Can it be improved? Yes. But every program can be improved. Its really some of the fundamentals above that make it stand out.

Now I am still reading the messages... And I am sure that almost ALL of the people who wrote here some notes about T-bird did this because the others did. They can't see that T-bird is actually at a very developing stage, and saying that T-bird is better than ms outlook just because it's free makes me laugh. Is it difficult to find cracks on the Net? Easier than anything else. opening yahoo or google, typing cracks for The Bat! and you are done. no point that's it is free. It doesn't make difference which e mail client to use, they all do the same thing, but still i can say which client is the most useful to work with. THE BAT. That's the point.

downloading and installing thunderbird - 10 minutes
downloading The BAT! , installing it and finding the cracks - 13 minutes

you see, the difference is just 3 minutes.mso which client is better?

P.S. as i said all e-mail clients do the same thing. does it matter which one to choose? think of this guys.

Last note: instead of making new brosers and email clients you better make a cool html editor. than all this will be similar to mozilla suite which is made of browser, e-mail client, html-editor but with only difference that they are not in one suite. -)
well, don't know if it's good idea, but making new is always good. continue your development. but for me it is just really funny... making browser, than e-mail client, again browser, again e-mail client etc. don't you have imagination?

p.s despite all of the things I said i am using firefox. but it has a lot of bugs. you fix them, but i don't think you will even improve the javascript support. unfortunately. it seems that you just don't pay attention to user's requests. that makes me laugh and be angry at the same time, too. do it. please.

I've been using Thunderbird for about one month now to manage e-mail for my website. I have used Outlook Express, Outlook 2000, and Outlook 2002. My company has us using Outlook 2002 now in combination with Postini. I set up a separate account in Outlook 2002 for my website and applied junk mail rules, exception lists, etc. It was putting a duplicate copy of a good e-mail in the junk mail and the same in the Inbox, even though I made a rule to put all e-mails from my address book in the Inbox. It was driving me crazy. In desperation, I installed Thunderbird and quickly got it set up for my website e-mail. It only took about two hours to teach it what was junk and what was not. I love the privacy settings and how intuitive it is with junk mail. I haven't seen any "real" e-mails being marked as Junk after I "taught" it that first day.

I love this program so much, that I installed it on my mother's computer after I upgraded her machine from Win98 to WinXP SP2. She was having a huge amount of problems with adware, spyware, malware, trojans and worms, and browser hijackers. Of course I covered all the bases by installing a good antivirus program, Adaware, and using Windows firewall. I feel that Thunderbird complements all these other programs and enhances her security. Since I live 1,250 miles away, it sure helps for me to know she's much more secure on the internet.

I intend to try Firefox next and expect that will be another piece of ammunition in the internet security war chest.

To all the developers of this wonderful software...Keep up the good work!

I have been using Thunderbird since 0.5 (although I somehow missed 0.6) and I love it. It is a great program that does everything I need it to do except replace my Outlook at work (if I could access the public calendars and public address books with Thunderbird, I would switch in a heartbeat). I absolutely love the junk mail filters, and wish my Outlook 2003 was a quarter as good at separating the junk (out of the 80 junk emails I got at work in the last 24 hours, the Outlook 2003 junk mail feature pulled out 5 of them).

I haven't had as much luck switching people from Outlook Express to Thunderbird as I had getting people to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox, but I am working on it. In the meantime, I'm not going anywhere.

TB is a great e-mail client. what I'm missing:

- GOOD search functionality (ie search different mailboxes at once, better options for search criteria, ...)

- why can't I delete the attachments but keep the actual mail? often I don't need the attachment but the mail but TB doesn't seem to be able to do that. this leads to a real huge mailbox because I'm getting alot of mails ...

The only additional thing I need in TB & Mozilla Mail is the message lister which will allow me which messages are to download and which to delete right on the server, like it allows IMAP protocol and TheBat! mail client.

The first e-mail client freeware very easy to configure, reliable(install and forget all problems).
I had before tried:pegasus, eudora, the bat(it was really boring) and other software found on the snafiles website(very good site).
Thanks to your Team.

Thanx guys. Thunderbird is indeed the best mail client I have seen so far. There only one thing:
Thunderbird needs a calendar, desperately!!!!

Keep up the excellent work!

Congratz to all who made it possible. The result is much better than anybody could expect. Long life Thunderbird!

I downloaded the beta of this client but wasnt that impressed. Im glad to say ive recently also tried v1.0. It really is a much better more upto date client than Outlook Express will ever be. I used to use two email accounts, one business and one personal. Because of this I had to use two clients to keep the inbox's seperate. Now I dont need to do as I can now choose which inbox each account goes into. Thanks!

The greatest e-mail client software ever.

TB is compact and sleek, and I haven't got any spam since I installed it during its Beta phase. :)

One improvement I'm anticipating is better portability support for removable media. :)

I started using it at .8, and I can say honestly that compared to Outlook it is like night and day. I love it.

I've used mozilla for about 4 year since v0.9x, the seperation of browser and mailer sounds really a great jump from fans to common users.

For me it wasn't the virus stuff in Outlook and Outlook Express. Thunderbird crashed far less than Outlook or Outlook Express, and gummed up far less often than Outlook, on my boxes.

But I agree with the post -- it does seem well-tested. I've used it since at least 0.6, possibly 0.5, and it seems solid with secure IMAP4 and I like the standards support. The multiple SMTP server support took a bit of work to work out (I smell my own stupidity), but that's my only potential concern.

Now, I wonder if the RSS client in Thunderbird will let me post this? :) (Actually, it didn't it seems, but of all the things it lets me do, it's worth shoving it into a browser.)

Whant to find out what can I use to acces hotmail email,since I don't have a java instaled on my sidekick from t mobile it only has browser that sign you in to t mobile server.
Thank you very match

I've had a problem with Thunderbird 1.0 on Windows XP. This is the first version of TB I'm trying out. I was using the Mozilla suite before. After TB imported my e-mail settings, I can download my e-mail messages from the POP3 server, but whenever I try to send a message I get an error that tells me TB couldn't connect to the SMTP server. I checked my settings many times, reset the configurations, but I'm still getting that same error message. I almost sure it is a bug, since Mozilla was working just fine before I installed TB. Anyone here has an idea on how to solve this problem?

Thanks,

Paulo

I am a fairly new escapee from Microsoft.

Thunderbird 1.0 is great... Better than IE or the version of Mozilla I tried. I also use and like Firefox having forsaken IE.

I do miss the ability to see the received date rather than the sent date of email in my inbox.

The flexibility of Thunderbird is a strong positive.

bobbie

This is simply a great Email Client..

There no value of Outlook Express Beside "Thunder-Bird"

"Thunder Rird Rules""Outlook Express Sux"

very good! thunderbird rulez!!!

bye

greets from spacemarc.it

thunderbird is the best email client i have tried...
outlook is not good...

thunderbird!!!!

If anyone reads these, please consider different sounds for different email accounts. Being able to insert my own audio files that say "Email for Bob", "Email for Tanya", etc depending on which account received the mail would be great. Also, having the sound NOT be triggered when something goes in the Trash folder automatically would be a huge plus.

I am intending to try instead of Pegasus; Pegasus came with a huge list of preloaded spam filters and it looks like Tbird is a blank slate. I don't want to have to recreate those, is there a plug in or another way to pull in some of the most obvious filters?

Awesome program but desperately awaiting calendar and portability software for hand held devices....guess I have to be patient....

Merci ,( thank you)...

Pour firefox et thunderbird , on commence a naviguer en paix et sérénité
Bill gates ferait preuve d'intelligence diplomatique en ne désignant pas
les utilisateurs de firefox ou de thunderbird ou de logiciels open-source
de communistes déguisés, car d'ici quelques années, ils risquent d'etre
beaucoup plus nombreux que tous les américains réunis ...

It is really great , I like it more than others

If you want to download webmails like Hotmail, etc in Mozilla Thunderbird use this great free program: http://www.freepops.org/

Started using Thunderbird a couple of months ago, can't imagine how I ever got along without it. Spellcheck has the word "Borg" in it as suggested alternate spelling. Love it.

please I WAND YOU TO GIVE ME SHOLARSHIP, IWANT TO SCHOOL WITH YOU

Thunderbird may be great but design it so that i don't get a message saying:"the SMTP server failed.." when i send mail via thunderbird even though i'm using yahoopops and set the SMTP server to: smtp.yahoo.co.uk

Love TB and the way it works mostly. Have been using since version .4. With version 1 and win XPsp2 on several occasions when I opened TB I was propmted to begin a setup of the client again. All my e-mails and accounts were gone. I run 3 different accounts. I have been able to use go back and revert the hard drive to an earlier time and everything is there. Has anyone else had this experience?

I'm using Mozilla Software since early 2002 by now and have always been very satisfied with it. In the beginning there were some layout and compatibility problems (pages were viewed different/better under IE), but that's history. By now, so I believe, the days Outlook & IE spreading Worms, Virii, Trojans ect. are counted :-)

We have this great web surving machine, all thanks to Blake Ross. He is the most genious boy I have ever met. Thanks to him and all the people who work so hard to get this powerful machine done. Thank you! After using the firefox web browser, no more pop up ad's. I will suggest , this is the best web browser to STOP pop up ad's. Thanks to the people who developed this browser. Thank you! You are the hero!!!

谢谢十九岁的男孩，他的名字叫布莱克.罗斯。他是这个网路游览器的关键人，也是难得一见的软件天才。

Evidentemente, es lo mejor que hay.

I work as a 2nd tier phone tech support representative for a national ISP.
I have been recommending "certain 3rd party software" to help solve people's email problems.

As you could imagine, this 3rd party product is Mozilla Thunderbird.

Problems solved. People are happy.

I wish my employer would somehow issue your product to our customers.
It would save phone talk time, provide issue resolutions, and cut their overhead in software development.

Great product. I have my entire family using it.

Klasse!

it is indeed the best e-mail service ever. Nice job. :)

Unfortunatly, i cannot use it at work because we're using an Exchange server (beurk) but it's the client I use for my personnal emails. Best client i've ever seen. Thanks a lot guys

It's a great e-mail client that fits perfectly with the Firefox browser

bababababa I'm lovin' it. Thunderbird is hands down the best email client on the planet.

The main reason I have been using TB for the longest time, is speed.

I have literally tens of thousands of emails, probably more. Outlook would load SO SO SO SLOW. Most email programs had trouble, or were slow. TB handles that amount without any problems.

I can understand why people are quick to diss TB, it's new and missing some features, but on the other hand it's extremely feature rich.

How anyone can tout and support Outlook (either express or MS outlook) is beyond me. My wife used to use outlook, she's a computer newbie. 5 minutes after trying outlook, it got removed because she couldn't go back to using that garbage.

Bottom line, I don't want bloatware, I want a mail program. That's it. TB is the best at that, although it still has room to grow obviously.

Thunderbird kicks Outlook Express's butt so bad, it isnt funny. Great email and newsgroup reader, and I fully expect it to get better. Congrats on reaching 1.0. Outlook Express is at 6. something, and it doesnt even come close to being as safe as this software.

Since I installed Firefox and Thunderbird last week, surfing and e-mailing is a great pleasant. Formerly working with IE did annoy me, especially the lack of tabbed browsing and less configuration options.

With Thunderbird I'm even more pleased. I have always used former versions of Netscape. Although these got better over time, it became outdated. Thunderbird offers me the user interface I knew from Netscape (very okay), but also the best security (Junk mail control, great attachmen policy, etc.).

So, my advice:
+ Choose Thunderbird instead of any other e-mail client.
+ Choose Firefox for browsing simply because it's better than the rest.

The great amount of downloads show the potential of open source in general and open source products in special. Open source is the future and the future became the present!

Thanks to the developers, keep up the good work and I'll keep promoting the products. (Now how should I convince my boss of deinstalling IE and Outlook.... ;-) )

Congrats,

Thunderbird has replaced the apple mail application. It works smoothly with IMAP (mail never did).

And it would be even better, if the German dictionary of the spelling function could be replaced with a more powerful one.

Firefox is a godsend, fast, efficient, small, great pop up stopper, tabbed browsing, extensions (I love that weather extension).. Been using it since 0.6! Getting better with every revision! I move every new client, to Firefox! Why go with something completely insecure over something more secure? Not worth the sacrifice in my opinion.

Thunderbird is awesome! I'm in the process of helping 2 Small Business Switch over from Outlook Express to Thunderbird! Good job guys! I myself have it also, and can't even think to switch back to Outlook or Eudora.

I LOVE IT!!!!