Years ago I used Thunderbird Email in Linux. I loved it, but didn’t know (or even think) that it was also available for Windows, I stuck with Outlook on my Windows machine after the Linux box had hardware failure. It took a while to get another computer to dedicate to Linux. Dual booting didn’t work at all well with a computer I attempted that on. GRUB didn’t want to work correctly and I had to take a more difficult path to select the OS when booting up.
I didn’t think about Thunderbird again until recently when Outlook refused to log into my site’s IMAP email server. A quick search found that it is indeed available on more than Linux. I downloaded it and found it setup much more quickly than Outlook! Even when it halfway worked, Outlook was finicky. Now, I have Thunderbird doing email duties under both Linux and Windows.
Thunderbird is also available for Android. It sets up just as quickly and painlessly as on a computer. However, I guess to save power, IMAP works like POP3. In other words, it checks for new emails on a scheduled basis from 15 minutes to an hour or so. Gmail’s app does the same thing (scheduling like POP3), but it doesn’t have a friendly GUI like Thunderbird. I’m not sure if it is the app that checks on a schedule or settings in Android. I think I saw Thunderbird is available for iOS devices, too.
It is good getting back with Thunderbird! I like the same GIU with both Windows when I have to use it and Linux, my preferred OS. While it obviously will look different in Android, it still has the same feel. Outlook for Android just didn’t have that familiarity between Windows and Android.
The biggest thing I noticed with Thunderbird that is not workflow friendly is if you make a new folder on one computer if you have Thunderbird running on another is that you need to close the program and reopen it to have the folder show. not a big deal as usually folder additions and deletions are not that frequent.
The short and easy learning curve didn’t slow things at all. Thunderbird has evolved quite a bit from the early days, but it still has the same feel. If you need a simple email client, it is free with no strings attached at all. Open source is definitely a winner!
