Recommend alternative to Outlook?

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It really is time that I left Palm Desktop and Eudora behind. Both still work very well in Windows 7 and have heard they still work under Windows 10.

Most of the alternatives I have found leave a lot to desired and nearly all can’t synch with my phone. However I recently came across Chaos Intellect which, seemingly, covers all my needs.

Has anyone got any experience with this program.

Before anyone asks, I will not use Outlook

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It would want to be good at $60!

cheers, Paul

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Had to give up on Palm TX after WinXP, issue between the software and USB on Win7.

Free E-Mail Client? I like the program included with the free SeaMonkey Internet Browser.
http://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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If you need a robust contact management software package as well as an email client, then something like Chaos might be worth looking at. Have you used the free trial?

If you don’t need the complexity of a contact manager, then Thunderbird (free) works quite well as an email client. There are also a variety of calendar and contact management programs out there that are separate from email, if that’s OK with you.

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I use Thunderbird, and I really like it, except for one minor annoyance: email items I’ve already read sometimes become boldfaced again all by themselves, as if I haven’t yet read those emails.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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I use Thunderbird, and I really like it, except for one minor annoyance: email items I’ve already read sometimes become boldfaced again all by themselves, as if I haven’t yet read those emails.

I finally gave up on Outlook after using it for many years. For some reason, on one of my machines, the data files for Outlook kept losing their permissions. I kept trying to get their permissions set permanently but eventually the profile begin getting messed up. That and the continuing difficulty of keeping my calendar synced with Android devices convinced me to bail.

I set up Thunderbird on both of my pc machines and set up the calendar app to reference my google calendar which is running on my Android devices. Events added or deleted anywhere are reflected immediately in all pc machines or Android devices Thunderbird, of course, lets you set up several email accounts and then in a choice from the View>>Folders menu select a unified inbox. You still have individual inboxes, but you can view your email through the unified inbox if you wish. You can switch back and forth with the unified view. Of course Thunderbird accepts IMAP as well as POP3 accounts.

Thunderbird has several nice features: You can display upcoming calendar events on the right side of the email page as well as switch to a full calendar page. It is easy to set up filters to direct emails from specific sources or with specific subject key words into local folders you can choose. For example I send all tech type messages into one folder, all cooking messages into another etc. Moreover Thunderbird has a pretty decent spam detection system and you can put a “junk” button on the toolbar to quickly get rid of junk that weren’t initially detected. Thunderbird then begins to learn from your junk designations. Finally I chose to setup the free version of the task manager Todoist to manage tasks between my desktop and Android devices. Todoist integrates with Thunderbird – the tasks pop up in a separate window and are accessible via a separate Android app. It looks like if you spring for the paid version of Todoist that tasks will be displayed along with the calendar notices in the Thunderbird calendar. Maybe they also integrate with tasks in google calendar- I’m not sure. In any case tasks added/ marked completed anywhere are immediately reflected everywhere.

Now there is talk that Mozilla is abandoning further development of Thunderbird and that its further development is being handed to an open source group. That may be bad or good – but right now the package seems to be a rock of stability compared to my recent experience with Outlook under Win10. Also the Win10 mail app, while not a totally bad app, is still limited in the features I have been accustomed to in Outlook and also are available in Thunderbird.

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Great information. Do you know if Thunderbird will import Outlook email (not a big priority I guess) or sync with the iPhone calendar app?

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Take a look a eMclient. It is free for two email accounts. I have 3 so I have the two other accounts send their received mail to my gmail account. It does both POP and IMAP, can sync with calendars and tasks too. HTML or both to send email.

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Yes.
Thunderbird will import Outlook mail – as well as address book contacts, preferences, filters and your mail settings from Outlook.

When you install Thunderbird and then run it the first time, it will see that you have outlook on your system and ask if you want to import what’s there. If you prefer to import later, you can go to Tools > Import and a dialogue box (below) will come up asking what you’d like to import.

Outlook (or any other email client) has to be installed on the computer for this to work.

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For more info on this see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-thunderbird

Thunderbird was conceived of and built or written with security in mind. It uses the contacts in its Address Book as a White List, requiring you to OK ‘remote content’ in messages before displaying them “Remote Content” is anything from pictures hosted elsewhere (kinda like content on a web page) to downloads that could be malicious. Once you allow Remote Content for a contact, it will always show up after that.

Thunderbird has no scripting. Flash in mails does not work and the HTML is sanitised before it’s rendered. There are inconveniences, like the google maps widget does not work, but neither do the malware payloads in the body of emails. So the only major vector for attack from mail is the attachments and you have to open those that represent a real risk separately to the email itself. If there is a virus in an attachment, your AV will stop it before it can do any damage.

The French military uses Thunderbird and contributes to its security features, which are claimed to match the requirements for NATO’s closed messaging system. See French military joins Mozilla, and French military donated code to Thunderbird.

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Thank you for the additional information in your last 3 paragraphs. I’ve been leery of upgrading from Eudora 7.1 due to security problems with displaying HTML messages. Now I’m not worried. And I’m hoping Thunderbird will be better under open source.

There are several reasons I’ve stuck so long with Eudora, but a very big one is that all my email, from all sources is on *my* machine, not someone else’s servers. I’m such small potatoes that I’m not likely to get hacked or get infected as long as I continue my current practices, rather than some folks going after a big company, perhaps just to be able to say they could get in.

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There are several reasons I’ve stuck so long with Eudora, but a very big one is that all my email, from all sources is on *my* machine, not someone else’s servers.

Be sure that you regularly back up your email, since the only place it resides is on your own PC.

Eudora is not the only program which offers the capability of keeping your email only on your own PC. Any email program which allows you to do POP3 email will allow you to do this. Just make sure that in your POP3 settings, you specify that your mail should be kept on the server for only a few days; otherwise, it will stay on the email server forever.

Another advantage of keeping your email only on your own PC is that you have virtually unlimited storage space. What I mean is, you are continually removing it from the email server, and therefore you will likely never max out your storage space on the email server.

With Outlook, there is a limit to how much email you can store in your email database (i.e. your PST files). If you reach that limit, you run the risk of your email database getting corrupted and your mail becoming unavailable. I’m sure that the same applies with Eudora, or with whatever email program you are using. Be sure to stay below that size limit by moving older mail out of the main database and into an alternate database (i.e. archiving your old email).

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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I do backups, including my email, to an external hard drive daily, and to an off-site location weekly. I learned about backing up way back in the stone age: DOS days. We didn’t have external hard drives, but you could copy important stuff to 5.25″ floppy disks. Just to show how old an “old fogey” I am, I still have my last set of Novell DOS (i.e., DR DOS) 7 3.5″ floppy discs, and the manual that came with them. You know: just in case…

On top of that, I’m not like some people, who keep every email they’ve ever gotten or sent: mine leaves Eudora to be stored elsewhere of deleted within, most times, a week.

As for leaving mail on the servers, I didn’t even know that was possible until I felt comfortable enough to tweak the various options, probably several versions in.

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Great thread! I would just like to give my input, about Thunderbird. I too, got tired of Outlook, which I got with MS Office 2013. My main complaint, was when I would click on a link, in an email … It seems as though, Outlook was going through IE, then to my default browser, Chrome. What made me suspect, this action, the amount of IE Temporary Files, being more than Chrome.

I started looking around, tried Pegasus, didn’t like it. Knew about Thunderbird and simply thought, I would give it a try. It was easy to install and I could have selected Importing my Outlook Address Book, but, I really didn’t have any. My email is mainly used for, Medical, Political and Computer information. Why? Email has been replaced by Social Media! It took a little bit, for the learning curve. I feel quite comfortable with Thunderbird, now, even though, I still have a lot more to learn.

To clarify one point, Thunderbird has always been an Open Source program. The talk of Thunderbird, not being improved by Mozilla Open Source Group, is because Thunderbird is extremely stable. I like the similarities of Thunderbird to Outlook. It looks like another Open Source Group is willing to take on Thunderbird, to continually improve the program.

I too, like that my email is downloaded to my PC and I have limited my email server, to only keep the emails for 14 days. Now, that may seem like quite a bit of time, but, have you ever had your PC crash??? It’s nice to be able to retrieve some of your emails. 14 days, gives you enough time, to take care of the PC crash and reinstall the OS and programs, you need.

One of my biggest complaints about Outlook was — How long it took, to open up a link in my Chrome Browser — That is no longer a problem, with Thunderbird. I also, LOVE the Junk Button! Thunderbird is really learning what I want and what I consider JUNK. Thunderbird also, has a Pop-Up notice, when new email comes in. For some, that can be annoying, but, I find it useful. I can see what is coming in and if, I really, need to stop what I am doing, to get an important email. I am quite impressed with the Pop-Up Notice for email — It doesn’t just tell you that there is new email — The notice, gives you the “title” and author, of said emails.

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I, too, have decided that I need to quit using Eudora, which I have been using for about 25 years. I cannot find a way to make it handle modern message formats without errors. I have over 670,000 messages with attachments that I can search with Eudora’s version of the X1 indexed search engine so I would like an email client with a similar search capability. It has been rock solid with a very robust database so I will miss it.

I use filters to sort incoming mail into probably 80 mailboxes/folders and assign each message to one of maybe 25 email personalities/accounts for replies so I need a program with a lot of capabilities.

I have heard of an email client called The Bat! that seems fairly capable. Anyone here using it?

I tried Thunderbird a few years ago but it seemed pretty unstable then. Sounds as though it is better now.

Other suggestions would be welcome.

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The Bat! is not free so it would need to be pretty good to replace Thunderbird IMO.

cheers, Paul

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The Bat! is not free so it would need to be pretty good to replace Thunderbird IMO.

cheers, Paul

https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/
From what I read about The Bat! the pricing for the Home version 7 at $35USD is considerably less than Outlook. But for some users maybe the subscription-based version of Office that includes Outlook would be a good choice. For simpler needs I’ve had success getting a few folks on OE Classic when upgrading from WinXP to Win7, Win8.1 or Win10, even have it on one of my Notebooks for demonstrating. http://www.oeclassic.com/

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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I see OE Classic free has ads and is limited – 2 accounts max. The unlocked paid version is $24.

cheers, Paul

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