Outlook 2007 is a very horrible piece of software and I wish Thunderbird had a MAPI plugin so I could use it as my Outlook client.

So I like Thunderbird a lot. You\’re right that it doesn\’t have any killers features. All it can claim to be is a fast, stable, cross platform, easy to use email client, but that\’s pretty good.

I am using Thunderbird 3 + Lightning + DavMail to connect to our corporate Exchange 2007 server and it works perfectly and is much easer to use and far faster than Outlook.

Maybe it would be useful to have a Thunderbird Groupware package that would have all those three components preconfigured to work together for newbie users, but a simple manual describing how to set them up is just as effective here.

As far as cross platform goes, last I used this Lightning wouldn\’t just work anywhere you tried it. I understand that things can be hacked to made work, but that\’s kinda the point of the article isn\’t it.

Welcome to 1%.

Second, as a \”mail tool\” (forgetting calendaring etc.) it is pretty exceptional and far better than Outlook in functionality (Outlook tends to \”know what you want\” even if you don\’t want it). It also, unlike Outlook 2007, correctly renders HTML rather than forcing everything into a broken Word DTD.

That said, yes, more integration with contacts/calendering would be nice. And yes, for business environments this presents a problem (frankly for business environments, it needs all that plus to work with Exchange).

However, you can use Thunderbird and Outlook together, which I do.

So, I\’m not saying you\’re extremely off, but maybe giving it a bit too short of a shrift.

I used to fetch mail from the server to my local system into MH with exmh as my front end. Gmail caught up enough with filtering. Its search is better, its capacity is more then I need, it\’s reliable enough. I got used to its lack of folders. And its spam filter is better then what I can casually do.

As for calendaring, I haven\’t seen anything I really like yet. Exchange comes closest, allowing sharing, syncing to phones/PDAs and being available via OWA. I wish resource booking was more reliable, but I don\’t really have an alternate. Google Calendar isn\’t there yet and it\’s harder to share with non tech users.

I think your advice is completely the opposite of helpful.

They should focus on a particular niche and target features and UI to that audience.

I think the small-business (including sole-prop) is probably the right target, since I think \”consumers\” are going to overwhelmingly go with webmail, and big-companies are too likely to have already to have bought into the Exchange ecosystem. (Though friends don\’t let friends use Outlook.)

I think Lightning should probably be built-in. (Or else structured in a way that makes it auto-download-and-plugin based on some simple user action.)

I think they should focus on having Lightning work really well with GoogleCal (esp because of Android) and Zimbra. Other open-source calendar servers should probably at that point \”just work\”. I think maybe they should actually *host* an open-source calendar server, since there doesn\’t seem to be much of a hosting market out there like there is for IMAP.

Gmail\’s search is a LOT faster than Thunderbird\’s \”Message body filter\”. Also tagging is a better paradigm that folders. Further more there is a lot to like about how Gmail\’s threaded representation of conversations, especially with mailing lists. If Thunderbird had a way to pull that off, it would be great, but I don\’t see it happening.

Maybe Thunderbird and similar traditional mail clients are doomed to fade away, but considering email is long overdue for a major overhaul that\’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I think it has to meet the M$ Window$ platform where its connectivity happens. Thunderbird needs to be able to hook up seamlessly with Exchange and other backend mail server systems. That would make it more popular.

It also has to be able to replace Outlook painlessly for those users who resist change. Many M$ customers know little about applications that don\’t ship with the operating system. They get almost everything (albeit less than the best) they need or want including office suite, web browser, email client, games, toys, photo viewers, paint program, etc; they often don\’t look for anything else…..

Our company standard is Lotus Notes. I\’ve never seen a mail client with so many bells and whistles and \”enterprise\” fu! I\’ve also never seen a mail client so dysfunctional and non-portable — if I\’m sitting at a different computer in the company than my usual workstation, and want to read my mail, I have to use the webmail client, which is awful. With Thunderbird, it\’s right there on a network share that both platforms can get to, and functions the same on any Windows PC or Linux box I decide to sit down at. Plugins and all. Lotus Bloats can\’t shake a stick at that.

Oh, the calendaring might be better on Lotus, but only when it\’s accurate. I had a meeting yesterday, and I was the only one who showed up because everyone else saw it as being an hour earlier. And it wasn\’t a timezone issue, it was literally different times for different people for the same meeting invite. I had to take screenshots to prove it, I knew people would think it was PEBCAK. Enterprise-ready? Yeah, if you\’re interested in inefficiency in your workplace.

Oh, and for those \”lab\” environments where you\’re isolated from the corporate network, standing up a Lotus infrastructure is really cost prohibitive. Thunderbird (or other free/low-end mailer) and a simple IMAP/SMTP server is all you really need.

Point is, while Thunderbird may not be as enterprise & corporate friendly as other options, the other options compensate their shiny exteriors with garbage performance and unreliable functionality.

All that said, I agree that Thunderbird needs some verve. Here\’s a thought for Thunderbird development: turn it into a local service that you interface with using your favorite browser. The common consumer likes webmail, so give them webmail. Maybe they\’ve grown used to gmail\’s interface, so offer a plug-in that morphs the service info into something resembling that interface.

Well, yes. I\’d hope Moz would be at the forefront of overhauling email/messaging — but so far, I\’m not seeing it. The Mozilla team made some \”daring\” choices for Firefox that paid off well, but I don\’t see the same thing in Thunderbird…