A Better Outlook

I’ve just recently converted from being a long-time Outlook user to a Thunderbird man. The main reason was that I finally switched from using POP email to IMAP, and Outlook is terrible for IMAP mail.

While Thunderbird isn’t nearly as robust as Outlook, it handles IMAP mail much, much better. And since I’ve been using it, I’ve decided that not having all the Outlook features, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The simplicity is quite nice.

I’ve also installed RoundCube and now use it for web-based email access. It’s pretty slick already, and is in heavy development, so check it out if you’re looking for something to replace the likes of SquirrelMail .

For Outlook users, the main thing missing from Thunderbird is integrated calendering. Fortunately, the Mozilla team has a calendar project in development. Unfortunately though, it’s in the very early stages of development and isn’t quite as sophisticated.

Personally, I’ve been using Sunbird, which is the standalone version of the calendar application. What I like the most is being able to store a calendar file on my webhost server, and manage it from within Sunbird in multiple locations. Lightning, a working project name for an extension to tightly integrate calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird, also looks very promising.