Just like the way Netscape did mail years ago, so too does Thunderbird.

I downloaded it and set it up with our exchange server and one of my pop accounts. It's versy clean in each menu window, the preference window is much like NS was/is. All the basic stuff is there as well as some handy things most others don't seem to include.

It seems to work just fine getting, sending, spellchecking, however the thing that seems to be a little slow is the address lookups. I am using it on a powerbook 550MHz with 512MB of ram so that could be contributing to the problem. I will say though that no other programs that auto-lookup/auto-fill addresses seems to have problems with doing so.

I set it up to our ldap address book at the office and even with a G5 with 1G switches it didn't work. It's possible it may have something to do with my settings but none of the other e-mail programs seem to be fussy abou the same settings.

I like the fact that you can setup your preview window in three different views. All the columns can be adjusted, removed, or sorted. The interface follows the Apple style with the included focus search line, (like the one in Safari where you can search google.) You can also remove columns from your view that you don't want to see very easily. The popup hints are quick and responsive. The Read/Un-read mail dot is large and easy to discern. The labels are nice but I would like to see some colors there. I checked under the rules window to see if maybe they included some color choices there and found none so I guess they haven't gotten that far yet. From the looks of things I am sure they will.

Another nice feature is the collected addresses like AOL's Netscape. In the addressbook you have a group just for them. There is also a properties button which you can use to rename the personal address book or the collected addresses group.

One thing I found to be really disconcerting was that when I added an address to the personal addressbook, Thunderbird attempted to connect to "rpg1-vip-m.blue.aol.com" on TCP port 80 (http) the question is why? If it's to copy the address to some server then fine, but at least tell me that you are doing so and since they don't tell me it causes me to question whether or not they are collecting these addresses for their own use. While I was writing this up I also got an alert from little snitch "thunderbird-bin wants to connect to iguana.mozilla.org on TCP port 443 (https)" Hmm...port 443? I don't have an imap account with them? Why is it trying to connect to them as well?

If I may divert on this for just a moment I would like to add that too many developers are doing this. Why can't Allume tell me why it attempts to connect to the internet when I launch stuffit? Oh I know it's because it's checking for an update, but why not just tell me that? They do provide a button to disable it which is great but why not add an explanation right there for less sophisticated users? Give me more controls right there in the window so I don't have to make a trip to preferences? (Why isn't Walter Mossberg all over this?) It's quite simple. Allow us the choice to be more informed and state it clearly and simply at the beginning of launching the program, give us additional warnings with the option of turning off addtional warnings for the savvy user who understands their purpose and then be reminded next time so if they are a non-savvy user the next time they get prompted they will have had time to check with someone but were still reminded and able to temporarily shut off "phone home" connections.

If you agree say Aye! OK end of inserted rant...

On importing. Boy does this module need work. I gave up trying to import addressses because the method they use for mapping the fields is terrible. They need to follow Microsoft, Claris, or some other example of field mapping to make it more simple. Their method is really sub standard and needs a lot of work. Hopefully they will clean this up.

In the addresses you get a "Map" button which as one would logically assume will go online and fetch a map for you for the selected contacts home or work address. There doesn't seem to be any way to change the four custom field lables which I would like to see changed. What good are they if you can't fully customize them?

One glitch I noticed was that when I was in a compose window for email and clicked on the "save" button the resulting popup stayed there even while switching windows and views. Not sure if this is a feature or a bug. They have also positioned a security button in the top of the window which is pretty handy to have if you want to digitally sign or incrypt your messages. Nice feature.

Overall it's a nice gui with some really clean windows. I gave it five stars in most areas except for documentation, features and quality/stability.

~j