Thunderbird 2.0 vs. Outlook 2007
January 13th, 2007
Currently I’m an Outlook 2003 user, but as I look towards the future, I can’t help but wonder if Thunderbird won’t eventually be my desktop E-mail client. Version 2.0 of their popular open source E-mail client is in the early stages of beta and is already gaining in popularity. At the same time, Microsoft’s upcoming release in two weeks of Microsoft Office 2007 will include their newest version of Microsoft Outlook.
With the exception of the new ribbon and some appearance changes, their doesn’t seem to be a lot of reasons to spend hundreds of dollars upgrading to the 2007 version of Microsoft Outlook. On the other hand, Thunderbird is powered by the open source community and will continue to receive improvements after its eventual release.
Ryan over at CyberNet News has posted a good comparison of the two products in an effort to determine which product will wear the mythical crown.
Are you willing to spend the money to upgrade to Outlook 2007, or will you be using Mozilla Thunderbird’s free alternative?
how can i add my website url on facebook for back link? 
Great work man! I only use SEO for firefox and SeoQuake 
No, Gravatar does not have an affiliate program. 
Does Gravator have an affilitate program? 
Great list. All the important ones covered. I've made my own Top 10 list at the following;
http://thatimportantblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/10-best-greasemonkey-userscripts-2009.html
Please leave a ...
Loading ...
deffinatly staying with the free one. you can get upgrades and its never going to cost you more… wow that like getting outlook for free way back in the day and getting free upgrades for like… huh wonder what mr bill gates is thinking about this whole open source jibber jabber now… (i just hope mozilla decides to make a text edditor that will actually bump heads with microsoft word…)
Drew,
I would recommend checking out OpenOffice.org. They have a free open source Office suite, including a Microsoft Word alternative!
Thanks for the comment!
I used the beta of Office 2007, and I fully intend to upgrade permanently within the next few months. I’m stuck using Word 2000 at the moment, and it’s not a pleasant experience!
I’ve used OpenOffice.org in the past, and it’s a great suite but I think Office 2007 has edged in front. It’s definitely worth the money if you spend a lot of time using office applications.
I’m still struggling to get to grips with Thunderbird after a few weeks. Perhaps I’ll give the 2.0 beta a go and see what improvements there are.
Phil,
Thanks for taking the time to comment and share your experiences!
I would definitely recommend Thunderbird 2.0, it seems pretty stable so far and has a lot of nice features.
Dude. Calendar. Eff t-bird. Those guys can’t be bothered to put that in there.
I’m using Thunderbird
Sorry for digging out a old topic
But I had too since I’m researching on this.
I’m pretty satisfied with Thunderbird. But I was not able to make the switch over since the office network had only support for exchange server. Thunderbird didn’t have the capability to connect with exchange server. Just wondering if there is any 3rd party compatibility package available for Thunderbird to enable it connect to exchange server. Just curious!
Benedict – I’m not aware of any 3rd party software that does that currently. I believe they were working on something like this for 3.0 (in hopes of making Thunderbird more attractive to big and small businesses), but now they are talking about no longer supporting Thunderbird, which is extremely disappointing.
If they can make the software more attractive to corporations, I’m sure this will be one of the things they do first.
P.S. Feel free to dig up old posts!
Kyle, You’re correct! To my knowledge most of the Corporates’ email server runs on Exchange! It would be great addiction to Thunderbird if they do it! Oh, yes! That is a bad news about discontinuing support may be because it couldn’t keep up the level of Firefox!
Sure! Sometime I love digging old stories and end up in missing the current one!
I’m stuck with outlook, but I’m wondering about TBird for handling bulk email?
I work for a small non-profit, and we need to send out 800 emails about twice a month. Outlook is being unfriendly with this, so I’m wondering if TBird would be good for it?
Because of our ip, I need a way to limit to 20 per minute. Any recommendations on add-ons for this?
Ciaran, check out http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/ . Lightning is a Calendar extension for Thunderbird. So far, I’ve not had a problem with Lightning.
Plus, Thunderbird is customizable with extensions.. Thats why I switched over. I can put what I want on it. I don’t have to have most of Bill’s crew of dim-wits telling me what is in the program.. [i graduated school with some people that now work at Microsoft. so, they keep me informed what they really recommend, rather than what microsoft recommends.]
But most people need to remember that all-in-all, Thunderbird was designed as an Outlook Express replacement, not Outlook [97/XP/2003/2007], so comparisons don’t balance too well.
Matt – Thanks for the detailed post. I adjusted it to show the blockquote correctly. Hopefully Ciaran sees it!
Oh, and I couldn’t agree more with your point! I just hope Thunderbird continues to improve and be supported by Mozilla.
Tom, I’m working with a non-profit as well, using Outlook.
I, like many here, use Thunderbird and am both pleased by
what I can do and annoyed by what I can’t. Duplicate emails,
spam, and (Junk) Filters provide mixed results. Of course the
spammers are working overtime to stay one step ahead of the
technology so I can’t blame thunderbird entirely.
For duplicates I use “Remove Duplicates Alternate” which
seems to have the greatest degree of customization.
For Outlook Bulk Mail – we have similar problems, I stumbled upon,
and recommend “Easy Mail Merge”. It’s not free, but, it’s an
affordable $ 40. It’s simple, user friendly, it will pull from almost any source, which takes you away from the address book limitations
of Outlook. The one thing I can think of that it doesn’t do
is tracking. But there may be other alternatives for that as well.
I haven’t found anything – yet, for bulk email from Thunderbird.
Til then, “Easy Mail Merge” might be a workable alternative.
Good luck.
Yahoo comes with Zimbra Desktop and may be a better replacement for both outlook and thunderbird.
http://www.epiki.com/yahoo-zimbra-desktop-an-advance-alternative-for-outlook-and-thunderbird