Product Reviews

Every copy of Mac OS X comes with a feature-rich email client in the form of Mail. So why would anyone look any further? There are several potential reasons. First of all, although it's powerful enough for most users, if your working life is organised around email then it lacks some of the organisational features you might need. Secondly, if you need to move your mail archive from Mac to Windows or Linux, you need to rely on Apple's export tools working properly, as Mail stores its files in a non-standard format.

Of course, there are commercial software packages such as Microsoft Entourage or CTM's PowerMail that offer more features than Mail, but they cost money. Another alternative is Thunderbird, the open-source mail client from Mozilla Foundation, which is a sibling of the Firefox browser and, like its sister product, is completely free. Available on Mac, Windows and Linux, Thunderbird adheres to open standards for storage and includes several features that Mail lacks.

If you've used Thunderbird before, you might not immediately notice too many changes. The interface now looks more professional, with a more Mac-like feel to it. It retains the three-pane approach that's become standard in mail clients. Although you can opt for either a vertical view (similar to the standard look for Mail) or a wide view (more like Entourage or Outlook).

As you might expect from a product that comes from the same stable as Firefox, some of the browser's features have made the jump over to Thunderbird. The email client already supported extensions, using the same format as Firefox, but this has been enhanced in version 2.0 - something which should hopefully increase the number of usable extensions available. Perhaps

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more useful in the short term is the inclusion of a Firefox-style search-as-you-type: hit command-F and start typing, and the first match in the email you're looking at is immediately highlighted.

New in this version is customisible tagging, which allows you to categorise your email with tags for whatever you want. This makes it easier to organise your email, by letting you create things like a 'to do' tag for messages that have some kind of action associated with them. How useful this feature is will depend entirely on how much your email requires organising.

As often happens with open-source software, Thunderbird does more than just its intended task. In addition to email, the application can also handle Usenet news feeds and RSS reading, so if you want a program which does these in an email-style interface, Thunderbird will fit the bill.

But as an email client, Thunderbird has two main drawbacks. The first is a lack of full support for Exchange servers. Although you can download mail from Exchange via Pop or Imap, you can't talk natively to an Exchange server as you can with Mail or Entourage. This means that Thunderbird isn't going to be suitable for many corporate and educational environments, where Microsoft Exchange support is a must.

The second drawback is a lack of integration with Mac OS X-native tools, such as iChat and Address Book. Although there's a workaround for the lack of native Address Book support, through using a third-party online application such as Plaxo to synchronise to both applications, it's nowhere near as convenient as using Mail. While it almost seems churlish to criticise a free, cross-platform application for this, it does mean that getting the same features as Mail requires a few workarounds.

Is it worth making the switch from Mail to Thunderbird? The answer depends almost entirely on how much email you have to deal with, and how you like to organise your email. If you're the kind of person who rarely uses folders to organise things, then you're better off sticking with Mail. If you're a habitual organiser whose work revolves around email, then Thunderbird's tags will allow you to create your perfect system for handling conversations. Either way, it's worth downloading - you might just end up liking it enough to abandon Mail for good.