2009/04/02

Thunderbird - actually a reasonable email client

Reading email can be a pain. Mutt is my preferred Email client, it's text based runs on UN*X/Linux, is fast and just works and is also available from anywhere by ssh'ing into the bix where the mail is stored.

Being text based, it's really good for scanning Email and deleting the rubbish. Emails can also be read and actioned, however being text based it's not good when people send pure HTML Email or Emails with nice attachments.

Being a Linux user (Fedora Core 10 at the moment) which also acts as a mail server (and file server as well as various other things), it means the system is on all the time. Outlook is a fine Email program as is Mail.app, but they mean booting a Windows or Apple machine.

So though the Linux box was on all the time, it was only really used for reading text Email through Mutt.

Then Thunderbird was suggested, it's an Email client from the Mozilla folks and it works. It''s actually quite similar to Outlook in the way it does certain things and if you're used to Outlook it will be relatively painless to use (though setting up Email accounts may not be so easy).

Now attachments are there and can be viewed as can HTML Email (rendered through Firefox or at least its libraries).

Thunderbird is a pretty good Email client for POP3/IMAP Email accounts.

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