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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"
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.
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.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Indeed. We want to make sure the malware/virus attack vector is as large as possible.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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?
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.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.