Thunderbird 3....

[ccornell]

Looks like Thunderbird is getting a little momentum behind it again.
http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/

Some highlights (quoting from the website)...

• Integrated calendaring (based on the existing Lightning extension)
• Radically improving search
• Many other user interface improvements such as faster workflow, improved feed reading, simpler user interface, automatic configuration, and more.

[AndrewZ]

I use Thunderbird 2 and Outlook 2003 on a daily basis, and I prefer TB 2 for its features and UI. TB 2 already outperforms O2003 in searching whether it is the quick search bar or virtual folders. I tried to setup some search folders recently in O2003, but they were limited and I couldn't get what I wanted.

I've been lightly using the Thunderbird calendar extension for some months, and overall, it's pretty good. The only place TB/Sunbird/Lightning are lacking are in Exchange server protocol and in device (e.g., Treo) sync.

[ccornell]

I've been using Lightning for the past year (it's a standard desktop tool at Sun) and I find it works fine. In fact, I kind of like it now that I've got the newest version installed.

[EdH]

So Mozilla isn't casting Thunderbird off for the moment at least. That's good at least.

Although under Windows I use Thunderbird at work, on my own system I run KMail under Linux. I used to use Thunderbird but moved away from it under Linux as it is becoming more and more of a Gnome app. The same is true for Firefox. If you're going to make an app have widespread Gnome dependencies, call it a Gnome app. A typical Linux app does not depend on packages with names like "libgnomebonobongnomebasegnomebasegnomelibgconfgnome...bonobonobonobonobonobonoooo....lib", a Gnome app does. Once I've moved to KDE 4.x I'll hopefully make the full switch to Konqueror for web browsing as it really does make pages look nice. It also doesn't have a ridiculous session resuming feature that can't be completely disabled. Firefox may think the previous session closed unexpectedly but I know that I issued a shutdown command. It's amazing to think that they didn't code in something to detect a system shutdown. It basically means I have to close Firefox every time before I turn off my computer just so that it doesn't annoy me the next time it starts.
[/soapbox]