Thunderbird 2.0 beta 1 is finally out (why is Thunderbird lagging so far behind Firefox?) so I decided I’d try it for a while in my continuing quest for a decent mail client. The writeup is on Linux.com.
2.0 has a few nifty new features, but it’s really the same old Thunderbird — if you’re picky about version numbers, you might wonder why this release justifies the 2.0 bump instead of, say 1.5 to 1.6. I do like the tagging feature, though it needs some work, and I really with the Thunderbird folks would allow users to set shortcuts and create macros.
Is it just me, or does Thunderbird development seem to be an afterthought compared to Firefox? Firefox continues to introduce new and exciting features, whereas innovation in Thunderbird seems to be lacking.
Don’t get me wrong — Thunderbird is OK compared to other mail clients, and it’s stable for me, which is the most important thing. I tried switching to KMail a while back, and it would crash several times a da which is completely unacceptable. Mutt would freeze up when downloading mail from my work IMAP account, on occasion. Sylpheed has also been less than stable — so Thunderbird is leading the pack right now, but only because it sucks a bit less.
