141–146 of 146 posts
Aside: Mozilla should really create a nice full-featured email server with the features found in Exchange/O365 for use with Thunderbird... it's a space that desperately needs competition and more solutions.
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I know people that used it because it was self contained for Windows if I remember correctly. I remember one person running the installation off of a Zip drive back in the 90's. I warned them that Zip disks like to randomly self destruct and he'd better be making backups.
If you want that, there is Thunderbird Portable. https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/thunderbird_portable :-)
Used to rely heavily on this, until an upgrade on one of my systems blew up the entire profile and I just stuck with webmail mostly. On my phone I have gmail, Outlook and Thunderbird (forked from K-9).
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> Sticking with just the Gmail interface (or whatever) is so limiting Perhaps it's the fact that I grew up with Gmail throughout my education (and now my career), but most local clients lack one key feature - quick move! My entire workflow around emails is based around opening & reading them, and then using the "Quick Move" button in Gmail to move it into a specific folder by typing the first few letters of the folde…
Gnome evolution has shift-ctrl-v to move to a folder with typeahead search. I don't use the gmail webclient so I can't say how it compares. I should note that I mostly use the emacs notmuch mail client, which requires having the mail mirrored locally (which I do with e.g. isync/mbsync), but gives really responsive and rich search and tagging capabilities
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I can think of reasons why I might want a local copy, but they didn't apply in my case. Do I have control over my data? I'm not sure I understand the question, but in this case the answer seems like a clear no, as my employer manages the email server.
There are options in Thunderbird to disable syncing completely or only sync messages from the last 30 days and such.
That said, NNTP is so dead at this point, outside some active BBSes that offer NNTP access. Usenet definitely feels like a wasteland when I've looked around the past couple years.
Microsoft could have effortlessly made it easier for others to implement integrations with Microsoft Exchange but they won't. They needed to make sure as many people as possible get vendor locked. Imagine going to work, and having a meeting about how you can make it harder for your software to interoperate with other software. Or waking up in the morning and spending your day designing a proprietary protocol designed…
"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market."
While its been a long time since Ive used Thunderbird, I just wanted to take the time to publicly say thank you. Many HNers probably wont (or cant) remember the world of desktop mail clients but basically during the height of MSFT dominance there was only one real mail client: Outlook. Which Microsoft was starting to monetize heavily, ignore UX, and keep it windows only (cant blame them for that). Then Thunderbird ar…