Mozilla Thunderbird

So I am trialling out Tbird again. For some reason I disliked it for quite a long time even though I used it a lot, years ago. I suspect the interface was kind of clunky, but of course there are all these styles available now. Really easy to set up with Google and Hotmail accounts, and with the calendar extension which is integrated, you just need a Gdata provider extension to connect to Google calendars.

Yesterday I was wrong when I wrote that you had to pay for the Google calendar extension, the one you need to pay for is for the extension to connect MS Exchange accounts. I can get by using Windows 10 Mail for just that one Ex2003 account that I use regularly, since it looks like Tbird will do everything else. If it does the Google calendars well then it can replace EmClient that I currently use for my timesheet calendars. It is not quite as tidy or featured as the EmClient calendars but the functionality appears to be there.

It will be interesting to see if Tbird also handles some of the other Google stuff, or Live calendars, although I can get by without the Live calendars since this is mainly for work computers with Windows 10 that I will be using Thunderbird with to start.

Well since writing the above this morning I have quickly moved to put Tbird on every computer I own or use. The Google calendar functionality is great, it works just as well as emClient although the information is not quite displayed in the same way. There is another extension that synchronises contacts which I am also trialling. Basically, Tbird has superior performance over Outlook for IMAP accounts, although in fact just about everything does, including Outlook Express/Windows Mail. It is the fact it works well across Outlook.com accounts and Gmail as well that makes it highly suitable to my requirements. What it doesn’t have is the ability to sync Outlook.com calendars readily and possibly their contacts, but that really isn’t much of an issue for me at the present time.