Thunderbird - Outlook

pros and cons

[D_Blackwell]

I'm fully on the Firefox bandwagon, and am considering testing out Thunderbird. I'm not unhappy with Outlook, but am willing to jilt it if Thunderbird looks attractive. Currently have about 20 accounts forwarding into Outlook, and manage them without much trouble, but get no more than 100 emails a day. Are there any significant pros/cons one way or the other?

[Larryhat]

Hello D: I use Firefox and Thunderbird. I like both but there are strange quirks.

My old system is still under Windows 95. I _was_ using Netscape Nav. 4.7 I switched to FF first, no problems. Then I downloaded TB for emails. Problems are:

1) When using FF, if I click on a mailto: link, up comes Netscape which takes forever to load. THEN not one but TWO email windows open, apparently under Netscape (Communicator? Messenger?) but showing the Thunderbird little logo box instead of the NS one.

Since Mozilla made both FF and TB, I wish they would simply talk to one another and leave Netscape (or whatever) out of the picture. I even tried deleting references to NS in my Registry. No help.

If I remove the entire NS folder (by renaming it) then mailto: links don't work at all. Error reads
"cannot find file". I've done everything I can to make Thunderbird my official and default email reader.

2) When I shut down Thunderbird email, the hard drive just cranks and cranks forever. I can wait a full minute or two before I can do much anything else. I thought I had a worm. I used every package I could and eliminated those. Same thing. Sometimes TB email quickly, but that's the exception.

3) Sometimes even FF takes way too long to close.
I'm not used to this. Outlook, IE, various versions of Netscape all closed promptly.

I can live with other minor quirks. There are quick fixes for most of those on the boards.

Any help from anyone out there very much appreciated!

- Larry