My Week with Thunderbird

A week ago, I decided to try living without Microsoft's Outlook and installed the new Thunderbird e-mail software from Mozilla. I have mentioned Thunderbird in this column on a few occasions and have even posted links to reviews by industry publications, all of which were favorable. In fact, here is another one from eWeek. Those good reviews got me excited enough to give it a try.

So with that all said, here is my review:

First, I found it easy to install and use. It automatically went to my Outlook program and imported all the e-mail's, both from the in-box and from other sub categories I've created over time. It also easily imported all my addresses flawlessly.

It worked fast and efficiently whenever the mail came in. I love the way it blocks all pictures included in many e-mail's since those can hold hidden codes, especially the junk mail and pornography. You have to click on a button to let the pictures be seen. Thunderbird really works hard to protect your privacy.

Changing the options was a little tricky, just because I wasn't used to it. I found it difficult at first, for instance, to find out how to use signatures. But after I figured it all out, it was easy. And there are plenty of options to make the program work your way.

One thing that drove me crazy on the first day was that the program told me I had new messages, but it wouldn't show them. What I finally figured out was that the software was checking my e-mail server to see if I had messages, but it wasn't downloading them. Once I checked that option in the setup, all the mail came right in just like it did with Outlook.

There are many good things to like about this program. But there is one feature and one feature only that did not work well enough for me to warrant keeping this program. And that was its junk mail feature.

As mentioned here before, I get 500-600 junk mails a day. So having a filter to take care of them is very important to me. And while Thunderbird did well in that department, it did not do well enough for me. The software claims that the junk mail filter learns as you continue to mark software that comes in as junk or non-junk. Well, I think it must be a slow learner.

I have been training Thunderbird for a week now and it still misses far too many. I have seen it take my own web log e-mail's and put them in the junk file. One morning I found my daily updates from the New York Times and ZDNet in the junk file, while some obvious spam and pornography e-mail's were still in my in-box.

Experience tells me that a good junk e-mail filter takes about a week to train. After a week, it should be picking off 95-99% of all junk mail. After a week with Thunderbird, I am at about 60%. Obvious spam and pornography e-mail's are still slipping through. And some of the same e-mail's that I have already marked as junk many times keep slipping through.

Going through and marking spam after every e-mail download is time consuming for me. Doing it over and over is getting tiresome. So, I am afraid I will have to back to Outlook. If you don't get very many spam mails, Thunderbird is a great program and I recommend you give it a try...at least for a week.