Mozilla Thunderbird 9.0.1

Thunderbird, developed by the Mozilla Foundation which we all know for having come up with the Firefox web browser, is a an open source, cross-platform email and news client. The open source bit in Thunderbird’s description means that you can download and use the software free of charge. The cross-platform part means it will work on your computer no matter what operating system you use – be it Microsoft’s Windows, Apple’s Mac OS X, Linux, or even OpenSolaris.

Thunderbird can be used to perform a seemingly simple task: help you organize your inbox as email keep coming in throughout the day. In this regards Thunderbird comes with the option to tag messages with the description of your choice (something like “Personal” , or “To Do”), an advanced folders view so that you can organize and display folders in your inbox as you see fit (sort by favorites or recently viewed for example), and even a handy find bar which will come in handy when you want to find something in your inbox.

This search functionality deserves a closer look. Speeding up your searches within displayed images via the find bar is nice, but what’s even nicer is that Thunderbird will through search results your way immediately after you start typing a query. And, for those annoying times when you need to find the same thing over and over again and find yourself endlessly performing the same search, Thunderbird comes with a handy feature – saved searches. Just save a search as a folder and click that folder to rerun the search.

From a security point of view, Thunderbird is as safe as they come. The email client uses a leading-edge junk mail filter that will keep unwanted spam messages out of your inbox, it comes with support for user privacy, and has an auto-update feature that will ensure you are always running the latest and safest Thunderbird version. Almost forgot that Thunderbird protects you from phishing attempts by letting you know which messages are potential phishing scams and by warning you when the link you just clicked takes you to a different site than the one presented in the URL.

There is one other feature that draws users to Thunderbird: add-ons. There are hundreds of add-ons that you can use to customize the look of the email client, just like there are hundreds of add-ons to enhance its functionality.


Pros
Comes free of charge
Spam filter and phishing protection
Auto-update
Customizable interface
Properly good RSS integration
Plenty of add-ons

Cons
There’s no Exchange integration

Mozilla Thunderbird has been reviewed by George Norman on 05 Oct 2009. Based on the user interface, features and complexity, Findmysoft has rated Mozilla Thunderbird 5 out of 5 stars, naming it Essential