Thunderbird 3.0 - New Mozilla Email Program

Brothers and Sisters,

I thought that many of you might be using Thunderbird. It's the Email companion for the Firefox Web Browser. Both are free, open-source software.

I've been using both for years, and it's interesting to note that Firefox has been developed and improved much more quickly than Thunderbird. Thunderbird has been at version 2.0 for a long time. The long-awaited Thunderbird 3.0 came out on December 10, 2009. I didn't find out about it until yesterday when I checked for updates as I do every several months. I knew that major work has been going on for a long time, but I had also read about numerous problems in the Beta Versions. Please note this is a full release of the finished product of Thunderbird 3.0.

I installed it last night without a problem of any kind, and it's a winner. There's a lengthy list of new features and improvements over version 2.0 (i.e. speed, security, more functions, easier setup, new indexing system, etc.). You really need to read the release notes to find out how extensive the changes are. I'll just say that it works better and faster than version 2.0, and I like everything they've done. If you already have Thunderbird 2.0 installed on your computer, updating is automatic, quick, and painless - importing your addresses, mail account information, settings, filters, etc. Updating is a class act, and everything works properly in a matter of less than 3 minutes in my case.

Just go to your help menu in Thunderbird, click for "check for updates". You will have choices of "Yes, No, or Later". You can also click "release notes" under the help menu to go to a web site that has release information for your current version and links to the new release information. The update will even check your existing extensions and themes to see which ones won't work or need updating before you say "Yes, No, or Later". If you're like me, I didn't have many themes or extensions installed in Thunderbird, so I didn't lose anything that I really need. If updated extensions or themes exist, they will also be installed with your update. In short, it's fast, painless, and easy. You can also download Version 3 by itself and install it manually if you want to, but that would mean importing your addresses, and setting everything up again. I opted for everything automated, and I don't see any reason to install it manually.

Try Thunderbird 3.0. I think that you'll really like it.