Mozilla announced download of Thunderbird2 which has some great advantages. For people who don’t know about Thunderbird “Thunderbird is an email client like Microsoft’s Outlook Express” Thunderbird allows you to manage your emails in similar manner like you do on Outlook Express but when i saw the features, It told me its better than Outlook Express in some of the terms which can attract me to use it. If you are interested you can also download the application “Thunderbird2 Download” and then we can look at the feature together.

Unique Features of Thunderbird

• Message Tagging: Most of us are familiar with “Label” feature of Gmail. Thunderbird2 allows you to do the same with option of using 5 predefined ( with colors) tags and ability to add new tags. But I did not see ability to add colors to new tag and multiple tags too.
• Message History Navigation: It allows you go forward and backward just like we do in browsers. This is a good feature as it allows you to get back to last message you read in one click instead of thinking what was the last message you read.
• Quick Search: This feature is one of my favorite with FireFox too. Just press ctrl + F and you get a small search pane within Thunderbird itself.
• Saved Searches: It also allows you to save your previous searches like Google’s Personalized Search, This can take off the burden of common searches we make.
• Phishing Protection: This is another feature that attracts me, When you get an email having a link say “Get 50$ free”, but then it takes you to site whose address is different than what is specified ( phishing is one way to get users personal detail by fooling him) , Thunderbird2 gives you a warning, I don’t think this feature is present in Outlook Express.
• Smart Smap Filter: Each time you mark a message as spammed, Thunderbird2 gets smarter. It learns from users experience. So your burden of marking mails spammed get reduced next time you get same kind of mail.
• Automatic Update: This is a good feature as you are free from keep on check for updates. It can tell you when an update is ready and you can choose to download it.
• Adon-Manager: It allows you to install plugins which can be used with it. This feature is similar to what we use in Firefox
• Thunderbird2 is Free: Its open source and its free. Outlook Express might come with office package but this one is free.

Message tags in Thunderbird

Saved Search in Thunderbird

Message History Navigation in Thunderbird

[ Image Courtesy : Mozilla ]

I think Thunderbird2 is a great email client. Its not heavy on system like Outlook Express latest version which I had been using in office. Its free and it has features of tagging, mail searches and protection against spamming.

I would like to hear your experience of using it, If you are using Outlook Express , compare and it and lets debate which one is good. Do you want to participate ? Please Do.

Update Don’t Forget to Read How to Integrate Calendar on Thunderbird and Sync with Google calendar By Thilak