Since moving out of state from where our office is and working remotely back in 2001 some unique challenges came about. One of those was email as it seems we continue to use it as a way to communicate and store documentation. Since the company I work for is a Microsoft shop Outlook is the standard and for me it was causing problems. I never used the calendar feature much and did not like having more than one archive, not to mention needing one at all.

I’d guess in a company with a large number of employees this type of setup and the access Outlook brings might be a good setup but consistently having to go to archives to find old emails and documents was becoming a pain. Not to mention some internal IT situations which would cause headaches for those who kept a lot of email, archived or not. So now that I was remote and using my own equipment, supporting it and my network access I went looking for a new solution. Back in 1998 before we standardized on an email client I used Netscape and liked it very much so I went to Mozilla and grabbed Thunderbird. It was the right choice.

It has only been about a year ago that I switched and wished I would have done it sooner. The main reason I switched is the ability to find emails. Even though it is now 2005 much of what employees document from processes to fyi’s to “did you know” comes in the form of an email and in some instances attachments in the emails. Old habbits are hard to break I guess but because of this finding what was previously documented in email is common place. I store email’s by Department so regarless who it comes from it gets put in a group folder. If it is a Development generated email about a product it is put in the folder of the group that supports it, i.e. what kind of product it is. Today given a subject keyword or user who would have sent it I can find emails as far back as 1998 in less than 10 seconds. Outlooks archive structure prohibited me from having that kind of access.

Another reason for switching is I just don’t need the other non email features of Outlook. I don’t need to send meeting requests or reserve resources, if I do have a meeting it goes in the Zaurus as well as any tasks. Thunderbird’s customization features are excellent as well and make reviewing threads that much easier. Did I mention threads ??? Another big winner in my book is email threads and how they are handled. No more searching for other messages related to the one I’m looking for, one click and the entire thread is right there.

Last but not least is Thunderbird’s ability to operate on multiple operating systems. I need Windows XP for work but when traveling it is Ubuntu that is my workhorse. If I need email just copy the mail folder and I’m ready to go. When I get home copy it back to the Windoze box and I back to being current. I’d prefer not to use XP but enabling web versions of some applications are preventing this. I can live with that for now.

I am very pleased with Thunderbird and if all you need is email I’d recommend it. As the slogan says, “reclaim your inbox” !!!