Mozilla Releases Thunderbird 5

supersloshy writes "Mozilla has released the latest version of Thunderbird, their popular email client, now in sync with their new rapid-release versioning system. Among the new features are the new add-ons manager from Firefox 4, revised account creation, faster response times, the ability to load plugins in RSS feeds and over 390 platform fixes. For more information, read the release notes"

Comments

Who uses Thunderbird?

[Warlord88]

Can someone give me a good reason to use Thunderbird or any other mail client. I haven't felt the need for it ever since gmail arrived. I can access it from any machine, mobile or tablet. Attachments are becoming easier, yadda yadda. I genuinely trying to figure out when I would want to use a mail client. Maybe in an office environment where I would not like to forward emails to gmail?

Re:Who uses Thunderbird?

[BZ]

gmail's offline capabilities are still pretty poor, for one thing. Support for S/MIME isn't quite there yet (though there are browser extensions that try to do it). Latencies are way higher than a local mail client, at least for me. The "conversation" model it uses is not something everyone likes.

Gmail doesn't have NNTP support. Gmail doesn't try to remind you when you forget an to attach an attachment that you mention in the mail. Gmail sticks you with a crappy editing widget for your mail (granted, Thunderbird's is not much better).

Most importantly, not using gmail means Google doesn't have access to your mail. This is something some people actually care about, even if you don't. And not just for "office" mails.

Re:Who uses Thunderbird?

[Steauengeglase]

Backups and Liability. I don't think I'm the only person who has lost random messages in Gmail. Also, call me old, but there is some stuff you just don't want sitting on a Gmail account or I should say, there is some stuff that your clients would think about suing you if they knew your employees were just forwarding it off to their Gmail accounts.

Re:Who uses Thunderbird?

[jbeaupre]

There's probably not a great reason. But there are a few differences that make it worthwhile to some people. The big thing to remember is Gmail and Thunderbird are not mutually exclusive. I use Gmail through Thunderbird and through a web interface.

Reasons Thunderbird might be useful to some people vs web based Gmail:
Interface preference. Neither is superior, but some folks prefer Thunderbird.
Multiple accounts. Thunderbird lets you manage multiple accounts with multiple providers easily.
Plugins. I can only think of one: openPGP. And most people can live without it.
Search. Believe it or not, Thunderbird gives you better control of search than Gmail
Offline. Thunderbird lets you mess with your email while you are offline.

So my advice is to give Thunderbird a try, don't expect to be blown away, but who knows, you might like it.

Re:Who uses Thunderbird?

[0123456]

Can someone give me a good reason to use Thunderbird or any other mail client. I haven't felt the need for it ever since gmail arrived.

Because we don't want to give all our email to Google?

Re:Who uses Thunderbird?

[vux984]

Thunderbird is free.
Gmail is "free".

Thunderbird also handles receiving mail from multiple accounts better in my opinion. Yes gmail has all kinds of features to do this, but i like COMPLETELY separate inboxes for some stuff; and stuff like multiple-imap account support is better in thunderbird.

Thunderbird is an application. Gmail is a web application.Its a good web app, but its still feels like a webapp. Its window handling in particular is REALLY annoying compared to a native app.

Too Many Updates

[Normal Dan]

It seems like every time I look at my computer something else is asking to be updated. Flash, Java, Adobe, Firefox, Windows itself, etc. Can we just knock it off already and update once every 6 months or so? That would be nice.

Also, get off my lawn.

Re:Too Many Updates

[MightyMartian]

Indeed. We want to make sure the malware/virus attack vector is as large as possible.

Re:Too Many Updates

[vlm]

It seems like every time I look at my computer something else is asking to be updated. Flash, Java, Adobe, Firefox, Windows itself, etc. Can we just knock it off already and update once every 6 months or so? That would be nice..

You'd like Debian Stable.

OK, and what is new?

[mseeger]

After having read the release notes, the improvement to the ordinary user still remains unclear. Sounds more like a patch than a new version...

The greatest change seems to be the gecko engine. But anyone who sends me HTML mail gets a reprimand anyway. Does anyone really uses HTML in emails? I mean seriously? I get and read about 100 mails per day and write 30-50. Percentage of HTML mail is, once you throw out the marketing spam, well below 1%.

What i really miss from Thunderbird is a better search interface. I want search terms like "from contains dummy.com and body contains upgrade and to is not me". For more complex searches, i currently create virtual folders (based on one search result) and then search within that folder. But even this method has its limits.

I have most of my emails (now 18 years) archived. Saved my ass on at least half a dozen occasions. But this means 12.000 mails archived per year (much less in 1993, but always growing). So searching becomes the main problem now.

CU, Martin

"releasing" doesn't really sound right

[Luckyo]

I think at this point, it's more of a "projectile vomited" rather then "released". Or at least it describes both the desirability of the stuff being excreted and the speed.

When it comes to email, reliability and functionality is FAR more important then any new features. Losing important/mission critical plug-ins to version crap can impact your real life in a vastly negative way.

Oh well, there's always outlook. Can't believe I'd actually consider moving back to MS software on email. But if Mozilla is hell-bent to ensure that I don't want to use plug-ins because they will be killed every month for several days if I'm lucky, and never released on time if not (finnish dictionary add-on, I'm looking at you), then I might as well go back to outlook.

At least it has proper spell checking in languages I need for my daily functioning.

The new account setup continues to suck

[Kargan]

It won't let you create an account (even for testing purposes) using servers and settings that it can't "probe".

Working at a tech support firm as I do, the new account wizard that was implemented with TB3 is an absolute nightmare for users. I like TB better than MS mail clients in general, but they make us and our users' lives far more difficult than need be.

Do away with the "autoconfiguration" crap and just let people specify what they want, or at least make it optional to have TB "autodetect" everything, for cripes' sake. What's wrong with letting the end-user configure an account using any settings they want?