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Mozilla Thunderbird - Free Email Program
Mozilla Thunderbird - Free Email Program
Heinz Tschabitscher
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Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0 - Free Email Program

From Heinz Tschabitscher,
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The Bottom Line

Mozilla Thunderbird is a fully featured, secure and very functional email client and RSS feed reader. It lets you handle mail efficiently and with style, and Mozilla Thunderbird filters away junk mail too.
Pros
  • Mozilla Thunderbird gets rid of junk mail precisely using Bayesian filtering and detects scams, too
  • Views, tags, filters, search and virtual folders help you handle good mail in Mozilla Thunderbird
  • Mozilla Thunderbird lets you reads RSS feeds like streams of email with filters, search and labeling
Cons
  • Mozilla Thunderbird search and virtual folder populating don't use indexing for speed
  • The Mozilla Thunderbird RSS feed reader could be integrated better and offer more power
  • Mozilla Thunderbird does not exploit its own taggin fully (e.g. using automatic search folders)

Description

  • Mozilla Thunderbird manages multiple POP and IMAP email accounts and reads RSS feeds.
  • A junk mail filter using Bayesian statistics cans spam automatically in Mozilla Thunderbird.
  • Mail views, free-form message tags and flexible filters let you organize and prioritize good mail easily.
  • Searches can be saved to virtual folders that automatically aggregate relevant mail in Thunderbird.
  • Mozilla Thunderbird offers rich, but security and privacy conscious HTML formatting support.
  • Mail classified as junk can automatically be sanitized, Thunderbird detects common scam tactics.
  • S/MIME support lets you encrypt and sign mail in Mozilla Thunderbird (OpenPGP plug-in available).
  • You can run Mozilla Thunderbird from a removable medium such as USB stick.
  • Many extensions more allow Mozilla Thunderbird to expand its feature set or improve usability.
  • Mozilla Thunderbird supports Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista, Mac OS X 10.2-10.4 and Linux.

Guide Review - Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0 - Free Email Program

Mozilla Thunderbird offers a pretty and streamlined interface to a very powerful email package. Not only is Mozilla Thunderbird a secure email client, a sophisticated and very well integrated Bayesian spam filter knocks out most junk mail (after some training).

Combine these two aspects of Mozilla Thunderbird, and you get a sensible feature that automatically sanitizes (potentially dangerous) HTML code and turns off remote images for spam or anything else — worms, viruses — you classify as bad mail. Though not perfect, a scam sensor detects tactics commonly used to fool users.

Mozilla Thunderbird is just as good for good mail as it is against the bad. Flexible views, free-form tags and powerful filters, search and virtual folders (which also work fine with IMAP accounts and across email accounts) make it a snap to handle large amounts of mail. The integrated RSS feed reader extends these abilities to news.

Unfortunately, Mozilla Thunderbird does not use its classifier to sort good mail further. Its tags, as handy as they are, could be capitalized on further with automatic search folders, for example, or their application to contacts. Message templates could also be a bit more feature-rich (using variables or scripting, for example), but the basic functionality is there and useful.

The HTML support is near-perfect, of course, but Mozilla Thunderbird also deserves praise for its fine plain text editing. Should you ever require a feature not in the stock Mozilla Thunderbird distribution, an extension might well provide it.
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