That New-Feature Smell

You'll find a host of new capabilities, most of them focused on improved ease of use. I count tagging among my favorites. I can create my own message tags to organize e-mail. For example, I'm into nautical archaeology and subscribe to several different mailing lists that have lots of overlapping topics. Tags let me easily place messages, as I read them, into categories such ash Old World, New World, and Ship Architecture. Later, I can use the tags to sort and find specific e-mails. The feature proves particularly helpful for those who get large volumes of e-mail. You can also combine tags with saved searches, making organizing even easier. This is similar to the labeling feature in Gmail (but with fewer clicks needed) and largely analogous to, and on par with, the categorization feature available in Outlook 2007. Another nice feature, although not new, assists in organization by letting you right-click to return the messages to an order based on their original threads.

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The addition of Back and Forward buttons may seem like a simple innovation, but it's a big help for navigating your message history. Also, better-looking and more helpful mail alerts include the subject and sender lines as well as message-preview text. The notices, which appear as new mail comes into your accounts, hover just above your Windows task tray momentarily before unobtrusively fading away.

I was pleased to see support for Gmail and Apple's .Mac mail, a big benefit to users who want to grab their mail from those accounts quickly. The process takes little more than clicking the button for the appropriate service in the Create a new account wizard. I had my entire Gmail store imported within a minute or two. You can't have everything, though; my multitude of Google Alerts got parsed into individual e-mails instead of the self-contained, nested, and grouped threads you see by default within the Gmail interface. The 391 alerts in my Gmail inbox suddenly became 16,056 separate e-mails in my Thunderbird inbox.

Starting From Scratch

For new users staring at the nearly empty interface after installing Thunderbird 2, here are some helpful hints. Click on the Thunderbird 2 release notes link under the help menu and, at least as of this writing, the last link will take you to a Web page that, at the bottom, links to the Quick Start Guide. That, in turn, carries you to mozillaZine, where you'll find straightforward answers to some frequently asked questions. You can also head over to the Thunderbird user forums hosted at mozillaZine. (You'll find convenient links to all of these at the end of this review.)

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If you just want to get started, and you already have a Gmail account, that enables what is probably the easiest method. As noted earlier, Thunderbird 2 builds in hooks that will go out and fetch your Gmail. The process requires only a modicum of personal information. From the main interface, click on Local folders; the Thunderbird Mail–Local Folders window will open to the right. Next click on Create a new account and in the wizard that opens, you'll see a bulleted list that prominently displays Gmail. Click on that, and the wizard will ask you for your username, and, subsequently, your Gmail password. You'll then be asked if you want to download your Gmail. Click on yes and Enter and your Gmail should start filling your Thunderbird inbox.

Thunderbird 2 isn't the desktop mail application for everyone. If you want a free e-mail application that's superior to Outlook Express (and in some ways better than the new Windows Mail you get with Vista; more on that in a standalone review of Windows Mail coming soon), then Thunderbird 2 is probably for you. If you find the comprehensive feature set in Microsoft Outlook 2007 indispensable, or can't live without its many integrated hooks to other Microsoft applications, then Thunderbird 2 probably won't suffice. Microsoft Outlook 2007 remains the dominant player, and many folks will never drop it in favor of the new Mozilla e-mail client.

Thunderbird remains best suited to the avid application tinkerers and early adopters. But if you don't mind hunting for guidance online, adding extensions, and generally learning a few new tricks on how to manage your e-mail, though, you could gain a lot by spending $0.00 on Thunderbird 2.