Comments on: There is only one email program

For Windows users, Michael recommends an email program that provides the best defensive computing

[WaltCD]

I'm still with Outlook

Michael makes some valid points on the various e-mail programs, however, I've been very happy with Outlook. So many, many features, it's almost overwhelming, but simple enough anyone can use it.

His two complaints: 1) It's expensive: $100 if you get it by itself (Amazon has it for $88 right now). True, it's not cheap. Get it with Office, and you're at around $200 (or more). Okay, not cheap. That's true.

The other complaint about it being in one file is also a reasonable gripe. My Outlook PST is pushing 3 gigabytes in size (!). My own fault, really, I never throw anything away (including all my C-Net newsletters that I never have time to read).

However, as in his recent post about "Backing up your E-mail Program", that's the key. Back it up. Heck, all your pictures, music, documents, etc. all need to be backed up, just like your e-mail.

So, if you can afford it, and remember to back it up, Office seems to be a very good choice.

I may check out Thunderbird based on your recommendation, but your recommendation seems to be based more on the fact that it's free, and like Outlook, easy to use. Firefox is free, but it doesn't work on many websites, unlike Internet Explorer 7 which incorporates many of Firefox's features, and works with nearly every website.

Walt D in LV

[acahyadi]

thunderbird's major issues

thunderbird's major issues


I love thunderbird, but I guess thunderbird is not the way "to avoid problems in future".

It's only true if the following two are all applicable to you :

1. you will never buy anything that require extra feature than your mail, or if you buy them, you don?t care about making it synchronized with your pc. Take a smartphone for example, if its windows mobile based, and if you want it to integrate well out of the box, then you have no luck with thunderbird. But with outlook, you can sync your calendars, contacts etc.

2. you will never swap your email client. Thunderbird has no export functionality, and if you google around on how to migrate data from thunderbird to outlook, you will find out that the advertised methods in thunderbird's website are just not going to work, and there is no easy way to migrate it. While if you are using outlook, you will be able to migrate your data easily to almost any email clients exist.

However I agree that Thunderbird is cheap (free) and very user friendly. And I found it fast as well. But its surely a way to a problem in future unless they make the 2 issues above solved.

[oludir]

Windows live mail! Hello!!!

I have used Moziall Thunderbird and switched back to Office Outlook. However, I have vista running on my pc and I use windows live mail instead of windows mail. I have not had a single complaint about the runnin of the program.

What do you guys do with your email client software that makes it crash??????????

[tenc21]

We're in Agreement

I agree with the first two posters. There could problems in the future with using Thunderbird, and a major argument made is that it is free. But if you're going to be concerned about functionality and safety--as we are constantly advised in this blog, then it is being penny-wise and pound foolish to pick a piece of software mainly because it is free when there are others as good or better that might cost a bit (or even a lot) more.

[dkcreat]

it seems *FREE* and *open source* everywhere!!!

First of all I am a die hard Firefox user. So with all my solidarity with Mozilla I felt Thunderbird, used it for two months then switch back to Outlook, is NOT the best choice for every one.

You say it *FREE* and *Updated*, but for me I felt it is not the best as "acahyadi" has already raised some issues I would like to add some more


1) Thunderbird is NOT different in terms of STABILITY on computers running NORMAL processes -[Firewall, Antivirus,Network Monitoring, OneNote, Wordweb, SoundMAX, Firefox, RSSBandit]- on a very STANDARD computer -[Intel P4 800FSB, 512MB RAM, 80GB SATA]- with 256KBPS Broadband.

2) Add-ons give you many FEATURES but you CANT COMPARE it with FEATURES IN OUTLOOK -can anyone add live charts in E-mail with Thunderbird, raise you hand(!)

3) Thunderbird is NOT COMPLETELY BUG FREE -Mozilla keeps it updated, however, you will find venerabilities in code. [I am not kidding, here]

4) Can you make Thunderbird universal, without being Techy??


'Outlook saves all E-mails in one file' -- Yes this is something M$ should look at.


Finally DONT blame MICROSOFT for VENERABILITIES, they are the most popular O/S maker so naturally cracker will love to crack, I am using Linux for five years but still use XP as my primary o/s.

[c|net Reader]

In Answer to Many of the Previous Points

First, Outlook does support multiple mail files, but you must create the others and set up rules to redirect the incoming mail to the other folders. My company uses Outlook and has size restrictions on the main PST. I work around it by managing several PSTs.

I've been using TBird at home for a couple of years now and I love the program. Some have pointed out that you can do myriad things in Outlook and not in TBird. Frankly, I don't see the point. In my mail program, I want to read e-mail and write e-mail. What little formatting I might do -- and I often just write plain text -- TBird handles with aplomb. Perhaps such complaints are from the mistaken notion that one program should do everything instead of using a separate program to produce some content that is then included in an e-mail.

I hadn't noticed or considered the export issue with TBird. That is mildly disconcerting since TBird could lose support to some open source newcomer at any time. That isn't a problem now, but I can see how it could be a problem in the future. The question is what format to export to so the largest number of other clients can import it. I see that Outlook supports CSV for import/export. The output looks simple enough, so TBird could support it easily enough. I wonder if anyone has asked for it?

Finally, on the integration with third party products like smart phones and PDAs, very little is supported besides Outlook. If you need that functionality, then you pretty much need Outlook. Any other e-mail client will suffer the same problem. That's the fault of the third party product vendors, of course. If TBird gains a big enough slice of the market and enough customers ask for TBird support, then the vendors may well add it. That doesn't help anyone today, however.