The Rumbling Edge

A visitor emailed me this question not-so-long-ago, and with his permission I’m publishing both his question and my reply below:

His question:

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I am a new guy to computers and the internet, so my question is from ignorance rather than wanting to be sold on Thunderbird. I already have Firefox, so why do I want Thunderbird? Also, I appreciate the service you are providing with your information. I have a MacBook if that makes any difference in your answer. Thanks in advance for your attention to my question.

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My reply goes,

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Mr Brown,

With regards to your question, “Why do I want Thunderbird?”, although I am probably not the best person to answer your question, I will still do so to the best of my ability.

Formalities aside, I feel that in this world, it is best to have competition everywhere, whether you are in the private or public sector, the technological or the market sector, and of course the software sector is no different. I always advocate choice; in the case of browsers, there’s Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, Safari, etc. and this competition spurs innovation in each product, each wanting to outperform or “out-feature” the others.

==Background information==
Email clients are generally used in a corporate setting, with IMAP and SMTP settings governing each account. However, individuals do use it to consolidate their email offline, such that in the even the online server goes down, they still can retrieve their email archives. This is besides the general usage of the checking of email on a regular basis.
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And that’s the same for email clients. With Microsoft Outlook, people have to buy a Windows and/or Microsoft Office environment in order to use it, and furthermore it has its fair share of security vulnerabilities. For a mac(book) user like you, which I am also an owner of, we have Mail as well. It, too, may have its fair share of security problems and may not even be as feature-rich. (Though it might be, I’m not sure)

Here comes Thunderbird to provide an alternative for all of us. Besides being cross-platform, meaning that we do not have to learn a new program when we for example move from a PC to a Mac (or vice versa), it is also free and open source. Companies are free to deploy it without licensing costs, and its cross-platform nature also means that the workers do not have to be retrained when the headquarters decides that it’s time to convert to Linux, for example. It simply doesn’t matter whether you’re a PC or a Mac or a Solaris or a Linux user.

However, as with all software, Thunderbird also comes with its own security problems, but we should always consider the speed at which Mozilla fixes them, in comparison with the other companies.

In summary, you may feel that I am being pro-Thunderbird here, so I suggest that you download it (It’s available for the Mac) and try it for yourself. There’s no harm or costs in doing so. If you don’t like it, fine, simply drag the application and the profile to the Trash. If you do like it, then I think you would have found the answer to your question.

I am sure you will find many other reasons why each of us prefers a certain application, and I think there are many people in the Mozilla community who can provide you with the answers you may need as well. They are also wonderful people who help you with any problems that you may have.

I hope this answers your question, and I am open to all feedback. Do note that for web mail like Hotmail or GMail or Yahoo! Mail, an email client is optional.

Here are some URLs that you can visit to get more information:
http://www.getthunderbird.com/
http://forums.mozillazine.org/

Best regards,
Gary Kwong

P.S.: Glad you find The Rumbling Edge useful!

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Please note that all of the above represent our own personal opinions only and do not reflect any official viewpoints of the products mentioned.