i like it.
what's bothering you about it?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

I've always liked Thunderbird, been using it for years. But there are a couple of things that bother me.

For one, it's been happening more and more often that mail seems to disappear from my inbox, and it's only after I've closed down the program and brought it up again that the mail shows up. It's easy enough to fix, but really annoying, especially when I don't realize that I'm missing things.

Also, Thunderbird seems to have a problem moving large quantities of mail at once, which is something I need to do every now and then. It does something weird where instead of moving or deleting the mail, it multiplies it into copies, so a batch of 500 suddenly turns into a batch of 2500, and becomes so unwieldy I can't even move it (in chunks or as a folder entire) into trash, and have to unsubscribe to the folder and ask my host to delete it.

I could probably work around the second problem, at least, by handling my mail differently. But as a online short story editor, I get tons of bulky mail, and I'd really like to be able to store it for a month or so and then manually delete it.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Hm, I use thunderbird on both mac and pc and haven't run across those. Sounds like I deal with considerably less mail though.

Sounds like possibly this bug and this bug.

For the former, possibly disabling autocompress might help.

For both, creating a bugzilla account and mentioning that you, too, are experiencing these and voting for developers to fix them might help.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Or maybe this bug for the latter.

Then again, if another client works better for you, that's fine too.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

That looks like my bug! It's heartening to know I'm not alone with it. You don't even want to know how many thousands of duplicate emails I ended up with the first time this happened.

I'm not sure I'll give up on Thunderbird if I can do anything to avoid or fix these bugs, but at this point I'm just frustrated enough that I want to consider other options.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

I use mail.app with my IMAP and POP accounts.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

I've had no problems at all with using Mail.app for mail on my Macbook Pro. Handles IMAP just fine.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Good to know. I'm still new to Macs, but I'll check it out.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

If you didn't know, it's already on your computer. If it's a new Mac it might still be in the Dock (an icon that looks like an '@'), otherwise it'll be in your Applications folder.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Yep, it's a new Mac, but I moved the mail icon off the dock because I was all "No thanks, generic app, I'm a loyal Thunderbird user!" Apparently I'm more fickle than I thought.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

I use Mail.app, too.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

I think of you as old-school Mac royalty, so it does not surprise me that you go with a classic.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Ha! Funny you should say that, I ran system 9 for years past the expiration date because I did not wish to give up Claris Emailer. That being said, Mail came to closely resemble Emailer for my needs and by then, I REALLY wanted to dump 9.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

I'd ask if you're happy with it, but I guess the fact that you use it means you must be(?)

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

(I've never used Mail.app seriously, but. Grass is greener?)

http://jwz.livejournal.com/508928.html

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

That's it, I'm moving to Pony Express and carrier pigeon.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

I've never used anything else, so I have no basis for comparison. But the one time I had a problem with it, I just rebuilt my mailbox and everything has been peachy since.

I mean, it's no carrier pigeon, but.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

gmail, bay-bee.

It's for dummies like me, but I love it.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Personally, since I started using gmail I've never looked back at a client application. I can set it up to process email from multiple (non-gmail) accounts (sending and receiving), spam filtering is great, and I don't have to worry about losing anything if my computer goes kablooey. Storage of large attachments is not an issue. Plus, I can access all my email from any net-connected computer.

On the downside, there's no folders to store in, but there are customizable labels and good search and sort functions.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Gmail has its appealing points, but I'm awfully fond of folders, and with the amount of mail I get, I think I may kind of need them.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

That's why I connect to Gmail via IMAP on Mac Mail :)

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

I thought as much -- I would hate having to do without them at work myself.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

You can effectively set Gmail up to use folders, equating to labels in the Web interface. See How do actions sync in IMAP?

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

I'm sorry to say that gmail bothers me because I simply do not trust Google with my mail folders. If you are less paranoid than I am, I hear it's absolutely lovely.

I also gave up on Thunderbird after the second time it corrupted my inbox. It gets worse the larger your mail folders are, apparently, and since I tend to have a few thousand emails in my inbox at a time ....

I use a semi-obscure email client which works perfectly and does many many things, but does require a fair bit of tweaking. It's called The Bat! (Yes, the exclamation point is part of the name, alas.) I'm not actually saying it will work for you, but I think it only fair if I'm dissing another product to say what it is I actually use. Just put The Bat! into Wikipedia if you're interested and you'll find it, I can never remember their URL.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Oh, you know, it just struck me that you might very well be using a Mac, in which case, never mind. The Bat! is Windows only as far as I know.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Yep, this is a Mac, so no go. Though for the record, to me the name The Bat! is actually a selling point.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

It also strikes me that I am not reading very carefully this evening. Sorry about that.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

I used to use Eudora, but didn't want to have to pay for it every year, so in December I moved to the "built in" Mail program and though I'm still learning things about it, I'm happy with it so far.

And it has no problems with me moving 100s of messages from folder to folder. I've been doing this somewhat often, as I've been re-thinking my folders structure.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Another vote for Mac Mail, duly noted!

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Mail.app, like all the others (also gmail, but not for anything serious). Before that it was Netscape's mail function, but we switched about four years ago, as it didn't seem to play well with OS X.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Putting aside Gmail For Your Domain, I personally use Alpine, successor to PINE. On the PC it's pretty easy; apparently it can be done on the Mac, but I don't know how easily. (The second page linked to predates Alpine coming out of beta.)

(Reply to this) (Thread)