So, having been hosed by O.E. at least 4 times whenever I either upgraded the OS or had to reinstall it, I decided to bite the bullet and install Thunderbird. There's good, there's bad:

The good:

1) It's free.
2) It's look and feel is familiar, little new to learn here.
3) The message database is in plaintext. I am very uneasy having critical data to my business in a secret, undocumented format. What if those files get corrupted? What if Microsoft end-of-lifed support for it? Poof!
4) Spell checker. Gotta pay extra for a 3rd party spell checker for O.E.
5) Seems to get the unread message count right. O.E. always gets this wrong.

The bad:

1) No way to backup/restore the data. It's about as bad as O.E. here. C'mon, Tbird developers, how hard can this be? I want a simple way to back up EVERYTHING to a CD or another drive, and then restore it.
2) Buggy import from O.E. messages - it sometimes inexplicably gets the dates all screwed up, resulting in messages having been received in year 2101, or year 1965.
3) Search is essentially useless, still have to use X1.

So far I've only used Tbird for an hour or so.

Walter Bright escribió:
> So, having been hosed by O.E. at least 4 times whenever I either upgraded the OS or had to reinstall it, I decided to bite the bullet and install Thunderbird. There's good, there's bad:
> 
> The good:
> 
> 1) It's free.
> 2) It's look and feel is familiar, little new to learn here.
> 3) The message database is in plaintext. I am very uneasy having critical data to my business in a secret, undocumented format. What if those files get corrupted? What if Microsoft end-of-lifed support for it? Poof!
> 4) Spell checker. Gotta pay extra for a 3rd party spell checker for O.E.
> 5) Seems to get the unread message count right. O.E. always gets this wrong.
> 
> The bad:
> 
> 1) No way to backup/restore the data. It's about as bad as O.E. here. C'mon, Tbird developers, how hard can this be? I want a simple way to back up EVERYTHING to a CD or another drive, and then restore it.

All you have to do is backup your local profile folder.

> 2) Buggy import from O.E. messages - it sometimes inexplicably gets the dates all screwed up, resulting in messages having been received in year 2101, or year 1965.

I didn't have that problem when I left OE long ago.

> 3) Search is essentially useless, still have to use X1.
> 

:S
I'm lost here. I happen to like Thunderbird's search, and I don't know what X1 is.

> So far I've only used Tbird for an hour or so.


-- 
Carlos Santander Bernal

Walter Bright wrote:

> 
> The bad:
> 
> 1) No way to backup/restore the data. It's about as bad as O.E. here.
> C'mon, Tbird developers, how hard can this be? I want a simple way to
> back up EVERYTHING to a CD or another drive, and then restore it.
> 2) Buggy import from O.E. messages - it sometimes inexplicably gets the
> dates all screwed up, resulting in messages having been received in year
> 2101, or year 1965.
> 3) Search is essentially useless, still have to use X1.
> 
> So far I've only used Tbird for an hour or so.

Thunderbird stores EVERYTHING in plaintext files and such, as you said, so this solves problems 1 and 3... When you want to backup, just copy the entire directory somewhere... It allows you to do your backup however you want.

As for searching-- it'd be nice if the builtin search was nicer, but since everything's in plaintext, one can just grep through the files. Alternatively, there are probably tools out there to build keyword indexes from plaintext files in a directory.  Given, this isn't too convenient, but it is a lot more flexible.

As for problem 2-- yeah... That's true.  I've had the most success moving email via an third party-- imap.  I set up an IMAP server, connect OE to it and move all the email onto the IMAP server (where I usually keep it.) It's pretty trivial to move the email from the IMAP server into Thunderbird's local account if you want to do that.

Hacks tend to work pretty well with modular software.

~John Demme

> I'm lost here. I happen to like Thunderbird's search, and I don't know
> what X1 is.

http://www.x1.com/

Its like a google desktop search - Ive heard good things about it. Yahoo desktop search ( http://desktop.yahoo.com/ )  uses the X1 engine.

OT : I have a subscription to yahoo music , and i was searching for 'the  clash' but had typed 'teh clash' , and it came up with 0 results, i thought how indicative of yahoo's search :S.  I canceled the service.

OOT: I just realized thunderbird highlights misspellings as you type, pretty cool!

Charlie



Carlos Santander wrote:
> Walter Bright escribió:
>> So, having been hosed by O.E. at least 4 times whenever I either upgraded the OS or had to reinstall it, I decided to bite the bullet and install Thunderbird. There's good, there's bad:
>>
>> The good:
>>
>> 1) It's free.
>> 2) It's look and feel is familiar, little new to learn here.
>> 3) The message database is in plaintext. I am very uneasy having critical data to my business in a secret, undocumented format. What if those files get corrupted? What if Microsoft end-of-lifed support for it? Poof!
>> 4) Spell checker. Gotta pay extra for a 3rd party spell checker for O.E.
>> 5) Seems to get the unread message count right. O.E. always gets this wrong.
>>
>> The bad:
>>
>> 1) No way to backup/restore the data. It's about as bad as O.E. here. C'mon, Tbird developers, how hard can this be? I want a simple way to back up EVERYTHING to a CD or another drive, and then restore it.
> 
> All you have to do is backup your local profile folder.
> 
>> 2) Buggy import from O.E. messages - it sometimes inexplicably gets the dates all screwed up, resulting in messages having been received in year 2101, or year 1965.
> 
> I didn't have that problem when I left OE long ago.
> 
>> 3) Search is essentially useless, still have to use X1.
>>
> 
> :S
> I'm lost here. I happen to like Thunderbird's search, and I don't know what X1 is.
> 
>> So far I've only used Tbird for an hour or so.
> 
> 

I have to admit, I have had my problems with Thunderbird as well.

That said, it's all open source and I've done quite a lot of hacking when I want something changed.  XUL isn't hard to learn, and I really thing that's a big benfit over Outlook/similar - for simple changes.

I make backups often.  I've also had to restore them.  It's tar cW %profile_dir% | bzip2 -7 > backup.tar.bz2, plain and simple.  But, I agree; a built in backup feature really would be nice.  It probably wouldn't be too hard to write an extension to make one.

I imported my messages from Outlook 2003.  Had to strangle it a bit, but got it to work sufficiently.  The Received dates are all wrong, but I use the Date column instead and it seems to be fine.  I'm not sure how that compares with Outlook Express.

There are two methods of search; the quick one at the top right, and the other from Tools.  I find the quick one is mostly all I need for common searches.  I don't recall Outlook having much better search functionality.

Anyway, just to warn you, the major problem I've had with it is that as your mailboxes grow, sometimes it doesn't work as well as you'd like.  I've had to manually compact folders and restart Thunderbird on many occasions.  It's rather annoying.  Luckily this doesn't affect newsgroups.

Still, I prefer it to Outlook by far... and I prefer Outlook to Outlook Express by a similar margin.

-[Unknown]

In article <e0emae$mfq$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says...
>
>So, having been hosed by O.E. at least 4 times whenever I either upgraded the OS or had to reinstall it, I decided to bite the bullet and install Thunderbird. There's good, there's bad:
>
>The good:
>
>1) It's free.
>2) It's look and feel is familiar, little new to learn here.
>3) The message database is in plaintext. I am very uneasy having
>critical data to my business in a secret, undocumented format. What if
>those files get corrupted? What if Microsoft end-of-lifed support for
>it? Poof!
>4) Spell checker. Gotta pay extra for a 3rd party spell checker for O.E.
>5) Seems to get the unread message count right. O.E. always gets this wrong.
>
>The bad:
>
>1) No way to backup/restore the data. It's about as bad as O.E. here.
>C'mon, Tbird developers, how hard can this be? I want a simple way to
>back up EVERYTHING to a CD or another drive, and then restore it.
>2) Buggy import from O.E. messages - it sometimes inexplicably gets the
>dates all screwed up, resulting in messages having been received in year
>2101, or year 1965.
>3) Search is essentially useless, still have to use X1.
>
>So far I've only used Tbird for an hour or so.

"John Demme" <me@teqdruid.com> wrote in message news:e0eoj7$oac$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Given, this isn't too convenient, but
> it is a lot more flexible.

I think about this a lot in the Windows vs. *nix debate:

Windows / MS software: convenient, but inflexible
*nix: Inconvenient, but flexible

Is there anything that's both?

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

> "John Demme" <me@teqdruid.com> wrote in message news:e0eoj7$oac$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>> Given, this isn't too convenient, but
>> it is a lot more flexible.
> 
> I think about this a lot in the Windows vs. *nix debate:
> 
> Windows / MS software: convenient, but inflexible
> *nix: Inconvenient, but flexible
> 
> Is there anything that's both?

Ehh... Kinda.

Some of the newer Linux distributions are pretty convenient, but they make it a bit harder to do things that the authors didn't think of.  It's a trade off, but everything is still as possible with them as with any Linux distribution.

Personally, I find Windows' inflexibilty to be very inconvenient ;)

~John Demme

In article <e0f60h$13p2$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Jarrett Billingsley says...
>
>"John Demme" <me@teqdruid.com> wrote in message news:e0eoj7$oac$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>> Given, this isn't too convenient, but
>> it is a lot more flexible.
>
>I think about this a lot in the Windows vs. *nix debate:
>
>Windows / MS software: convenient, but inflexible
>*nix: Inconvenient, but flexible
>
>Is there anything that's both?
>

D

<g>

"Dave" <Dave_member@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:e0f8j0$15d9$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> D
>
> <g>

Well how about that!  :)

Thunderbird is very nice, I use it but I have to admit it lacks a bunch of features. Search is horrific as well as filter definitions (you can't get "(filtercondition1 && filtercondition2) || filtercondition3", instead you choose between && or || for every conditions). I've used another mail client that has plenty more features and works well (I don't like it as it doesn't improve a bit even though its version number increased in a +1 basis over the last five years: that would be Qualcomm Eudora. It worth the try but after a long time using it I've chosen Thunderbird anyway.

--
Tom;

Walter Bright escribió:
> So, having been hosed by O.E. at least 4 times whenever I either upgraded the OS or had to reinstall it, I decided to bite the bullet and install Thunderbird. There's good, there's bad:
> 
> The good:
> 
> 1) It's free.
> 2) It's look and feel is familiar, little new to learn here.
> 3) The message database is in plaintext. I am very uneasy having critical data to my business in a secret, undocumented format. What if those files get corrupted? What if Microsoft end-of-lifed support for it? Poof!
> 4) Spell checker. Gotta pay extra for a 3rd party spell checker for O.E.
> 5) Seems to get the unread message count right. O.E. always gets this wrong.
> 
> The bad:
> 
> 1) No way to backup/restore the data. It's about as bad as O.E. here. C'mon, Tbird developers, how hard can this be? I want a simple way to back up EVERYTHING to a CD or another drive, and then restore it.
> 2) Buggy import from O.E. messages - it sometimes inexplicably gets the dates all screwed up, resulting in messages having been received in year 2101, or year 1965.
> 3) Search is essentially useless, still have to use X1.
> 
> So far I've only used Tbird for an hour or so.