Mozilla Releases Thunderbird 2.0.0

An anonymous reader writes "The Mozilla Corporation has released Thunderbird 2.0.0. Among the improvements are Message Tagging, updated UI, Advanced Folder Views, Better New Mail Notification and Full Support for Windows Vista and 64-bit versions of Windows."

64bit support?

[sakdoctor]

What exactly do they mean by full 64-bit support. I didn't find an x64 bit binary anywhere.

Re:Good for them, but...

[spamking]

I haven't used a POP3/SMTP client in almost 3 years. Of course I've got like 5 gmail accounts so it'd be a pain to configure a POP3/SMTP client to check that many accounts. Or atleast it was the last time I did it and checked each account all at once.

I'd rather let Gmail deal with filtering the SPAM first and then deal with the stuff that slips through. That right there is enough for me to not bother with a client.

Maybe one of these days I'll return to a client . . .

Re:Good for them, but...

[vivaoporto]

I use Thunderbird to download my POP3 email and my Webmail at home. I have multiple POP3 accounts from my ISP, and a couple of GMail ones too, and my wife have one from Hotmail, one from Yahoo and one from her job. I shared the thunderbird profile between my Linux partition and her Windows partition so, no matter what partition we booted on, our email is all there. This is a way to save time and get all email with a One Click (tm) without having to surf through several ad-infected pages to read a couple of messages. All props to thunderbird, for providing this useful piece of software for free (as in speech and as in beer).

But the big hole is...

[tygerstripes]

Calendaring. TB is not used in the (office) workplace - even progressive workplaces that are happy to go with FF - because Outlook calendar support doesn't exist. I've no idea how good Sunbird (is that right?) is, but FF managed to get a foothold because the switch was painless. Without the ability to integrate with Outlook calendars, TB's not going to get that foothold.

I'm not suggesting this is Mozilla's fault, I'm just stating what I understand to be the real stumbling block for TB - and TB2 hasn't fixed it. It's a real shame.

Incidentally, TB really didn't need an overhaul, as far as I could tell. Prolly one of the most stable apps I've used in a long time, and quite powerful enough. Still, I'll have a look...

Calendar plugin just announced on slashdot

[digitalderbs]

This article [slashdot.org] came out a couple of days ago. It's a calendar plugin for Thunderbird 2 that syncs with google calendar. In my opinion, it's not an "Exchange killer," as the title states, but it could be very useful.

Re:OS X CPU Hog

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is a waste.

Thunderbird CPU usage on initial startup - approx 0 percent.

Thunderbird CPU usage spike up, of course, on the reception of an email for the first - as it should.

Thunderbird CPU usage now remains at approx 5 percent for absolutely no reason no for as long as the program runs.

Quit Thunderbird and restart, CPU usage goes right back to 0 percent...

Would you gladly accept a 5 percent downgrade in your CPU's performance?

This is going to ruin my Karma, but.....

[Alex]

Last week I switched from Linux to Mac OSX, purely so I could run Entourage and interface properly with Exchange.

Thunderbird is an awesome IMAP/POP3 client super stable, really great to use - in an organization that uses Exchange a lot not being able to interface with Exchange properly was a real pain in the arse.

I had a real nightmare trying to use Evolution, it was very unstable, I reinstalled my workstation and did all sorts of stuff but I couldn't get it to be as stable as Thunderbird.

So I've started using a mac for email so I've got a Unix box I can use Exchange on.

Just don't get me started on sharepoint.....

cheers,

Alex

Thunderbird vs. Mail.app

[javacowboy]

Thunderbird is by far the best mail client for Windows, and from my limited experience the best email client for Linux (though I haven't used Linux much recently). Mail.app (the Mac mail program) runs circles around Thunderbird and any other mail client I've ever used.

Thunderbird has been moving in the general direction of parity with Mail.app, but it isn't there yet. Mail.app still wins handily for its superior preferences menu layout which includes account info and mail filters all in one place. It's also integrated with the OS X address book and spell-checking dictionary. Once Leopard comes out, Mail.app will be integrated with the system-wide calendar process (another new Leopard feature).

And before anybody calls me a Mac fanboy, I still have a strong preference for Firefox over Safari. Safari is so light on features, especially those I take for granted with Firefox, that it's simply not usable (although Firefox should steal a feature or two from Safari to be even better).

Still no Sent / Received Date options

[Hohlraum]

They are still blindly using the Date: field for received and sent mail. The so called fix is to sort by the 'Order Received' column. That column is inaccurate when you start moving messages around between folders. I really wish the TB developers would wake up. I know of no other mail client that doesn't parse out the Received date from the headers and make it available. In fact it is the default date for most other mail clients as well. I've lost count of the number of people who have brought this up to me when I tell them to check out TB. TB (imo) is a superior email client to outlook express except for this one issue that they keep ignoring.

This is based on a beta from a few weeks ago, feel free to correct me if they woke up between then and the release and fixed this issue.

newsreader changed? welcome to 1995

[Xenomorph.NET]

Thunderbird's newsreader seems the same as it was ever since it was the Netscape newsreader.

hardly anything has changed.

it still displays "Lines" instead of "Size". it also can't join posts like Outlook Express is able to.

why has the newsreader been left unchanged for so long? it looks and works the same (crappy) as it always had. hardly anything has changed since the mid 1990s.

Re:Good for them, but...

[Ngarrang]

There is still a place for a mail client like Thunderbird, even if you use Gmail. What if you want to reference an e-mail message, but gmail is having problems at that time...and it is critical that you find it NOW? Also, having a client like Thunderbird allows you to only have to use your internet connection intermittently, like for folks still stuck with dial-up.

Thunderbird also offers more filtering options than the web providers, for those who depend on filtering to keep their inbox sane.

My wife uses Thunderbird at home. It has been sufficient for her up to now, so I see no reason to force her to use gmail's web site.

Re:Good for them, but...

[Yvanhoe]

Commercial people from my company usually use a webmail for personal mails but outlook or thunderbird for their professional mail. Why ? because they use laptops and cannot depend on web connectivity to write emails.