Most of these comments are 2 or even 3 years old.
GoogleMail is far superior to Thunderbird - and you all know that!

I have used them all - or almost - and I confess the first time I tried Thunderbird I did not like it. However after close inspection of features and after using it, allways comparing with others, I have to admit this is a great email client for one - like myself - that do have several mail accounts on different servers. I only use it on an IMAP configuration and it works like a charm as I can not only keep the messages I want on the servers instead of having them on my machine, delete the ones I do not need and even receive a message on a server and forward it from a different one, transfer messages from one server to another, on the fly, etc. I use the portable edition and have it installed on a USB pen, is fast enough and very reliable. The management of messages is top notch, as is the management of the address book, either in groups or by individuals. As a free program, it must be considered the best of them all. I have used Opera mail client prior to switch to TB and I feel that is the only contender TB do have. I prefer however TB.

Excellent, free, highly customizable, absolutely perfect!

I forgot to click Excellent for all of the ratings, hopefully this will cancel out my last review.

Thunderbird blows away Outlook and any other email program I have tried. Setup is really easy, and it is simple to create new accounts. The Message Filters are very handy and let you sort your emails quickly. I recommend getting the "Minimize to Tray" and "Menu Editor" extensions, the former which lets you get rid of some clutter without closing it, and the latter which lets you clean up menu items that you never use. A

The BEST e-mail client ever. With the extensions it can be customized, and it can recieve the mails when outlook fails. It's much faster and safer, and it has dictionaries for nearly ANY language.

portable firefox 1505 all the way

Thunderbird is the best email cilent you can get.
Gets email and it can also be used as an rss feed.
Much more features then outlook express.
Dose everything I want it too.

Thunderbird is an awesome e-mail client, probably one of the best freeware e-mail clients you can use. The only problem is that as an e-mail client which strives to be a GUI-clone of Outlook Express while offering some features from MS Outlook, it really fails in making the transition for more tenured Outlook Express users quite difficult.

To get the most out of Thunderbird (as an Outlook Express user) is to already have your mail account setup and running in Outlook Express. The process of setting up an account in Thunderbird really doesn't play well with setting up a new account from Outlook Express backup files on a newly formatted/reinstalled computer. I say this because the program, while having import functions for address books and mail DBX storage files, it only looks in the default Outlook Express locations for them...thus meaning you have to have your Outlook Express acount previously set up on the machine. There is no user input to tell the program to look for mail storage files in a remote folder. The same goes for the Address Book .wab file...quite annoying I must say.

The worst part of it all, like FireFox when importing IE favorites, Thunderbird doesn't seemlessly integrate the imported Address Book or Mail into the current folders...i.e. putting the Inbox in the Inbox folder, the sub-folders under inbox in the inbox folder, etc. Or the address book in the main window. It instead puts them in a folder requiring the user to move them as he/she pleases. Another annoyance for lazy people like me.

It comes with a nice junkmail filter, something Outlook Express certainly doesnt have and sorely needs.

It does an awesome job in cloning the Outlook Express GUI. I felt right at home...however...this is built on the sluggish Mozilla code...woopadedee! Its quite a bit slower than Outlook Express in opening, running and receiving mail.


So basically for me it comes down to the fact that all I use a mail client for is address book and e-mail. While Mozilla brands itself as including features from Outlook that arent in Outlook Express, I would never use those features anyway. So basically I dont need to sacirifice the speed and ease in using Outlook Express to use Thunderbird...let alone the time to learn it. I say stick with Outlook Express if you are already a person who has been using it for over 5 years, like myself.

I wouldn't consider using anything else for my E-Mail client.

Thunderbird all the way.

Thunderbird worked fine the first time I installed it. The program did everything I wanted and I was pleased enough to consider dropping "The Bat" as my e-mail client of choice.

Then I had to do a system restore under Windows XP for non-related problems and now Thunderbird will not get e-mail... Sending works fine but hey, if you cannot receive mail and the error window doesn't display anything but the first line of the error there isn't anything you can do to fix the problem.

I wish I knew more... if the program works for you its very nice but if you have the same trouble I did on the 2nd install it just isn't worth it. Life is to short...

Thunderbird worked fine the first time I installed it. The program did everything I wanted and I was pleased enough to consider dropping "The Bat" as my e-mail client of choice.

Then I had to do a system restore under Windows XP for non-related problems and now Thunderbird will not get e-mail... Sending works fine but hey, if you cannot send mail and the error window doesn't display anything but the first line of the error there isn't anything you can do to fix the problem.

I wish I knew more... if the program works for you its very nice but if you have the same trouble I did on the 2nd install it just isn't worth it. Life is to short...