22 August 2009

Dear ThunderBird: you're fired

I've been progressively less happy with thunderbird for a while now. But it's actions after the recent upgrade to 2.0.0.23 have sealed it's fate as far as I'm concerned. It's time to look for a new mail client. Apple's Mail is leading the pack, but I'm honestly open to other options if folks have them.

The straw that broke the camel's back? Since the upgrade it has completley hid new mail in my inbox from me. I can click Get Mail, quit and restart, etc until my fingers are numb... it just won't show me any new mail. I honestly thought it was just a slow mail day, then two days, now three... then I happened to check in on my iPhone. over 500 mails in my inbox. Probably 2 dozen of them not spam. Thankfully it's only doing it on my personal account. And only on the main inbox... all the sub folders that I sieve messages into are just fine.

I've done just about everything I can think of to recover it... stopping shy of removing the account and re-defining it. I was about to do that when I decided it was time to find a new mail client.



UPDATE:

Got a couple suggestions for fixing it, and a couple recommendations to replace it.

go offline/online: nope, didn't help. Seriously, I've restarted the entire app... state change on the account ain't gunna help.

compact the inbox: btdt, didn't help.

rebuild index: btdt, didn't help.

Thunderbird 3.0 (beta 3) - might be nice someday. But when I start it up it keeps asking for the master password for the software security device. I don't have a master password set. Upon getting around that bit of UI insanity, it's not bad.

It does however appear to have fixed the issue when I started it, all of a sudden my inbox is functional again, even on the 2.0.0.23 build.

Postbox (beta 15) - looks like it has some neat ideas... but it's very clear that it's underlying infrastructure is thunderbird 2.x. Since my issues with TB are mostly not UI but underlying infrastructure, I don't see this as an improvement. (well, ok some of them are, but postbox only looks to fix one... which TB3 also fixes.) Oh, and it's kinda expensive for the small amount of added functionality.

Eudora - haha... you're kidding, right? no? you're serious? dude, you need help.