Anyone recommend an email client? Thunderbird 3 is crap.

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Can anyone recommend an email client to run on Vista please?

I've happily used Thunderbird 2 for several years on XP and Vista. I allowed it to "upgrade" to Thunderbird 3 a week ago and it is appallingly bad. I've just tried to add a new email address. Not a major operation you would think, but after an hour of struggling with the most bizarre setup issues I've had enough. It has a new feature that insists on trying to guess the connection settings and has made a complete mess of the new email account. It won't even give me the options I need to put the correct settings in. I already know exactly what settings I need but it won't let me put them in!

Things have gone from bad to nonsensical. After checking for new mail Thunderbird went on to create email folders all over the place on the UI with strange names related to the new email address then complains about invalid certificates, invalid connections, problems with Avast and TLS and thinks I'm under a phishing attack. It says the outgoing connection cannot be encrypted but won't let me change it to use the connection settings that I know already work for my other email accounts on the same domain. Anyone would think I'm configuring the next space shuttle for imminent launch. It is generally wreaking havoc in every conceivable way.

Finally it completely lost the plot and completely corrupted itself and has lost over a thousand emails and all my email accounts. Thankfully I'd got it backed up and have restored it back to the point before adding the new email address.

I've had enough. Thunderbird 3 is a disaster. Time to kick Thunderbird out and replace it with something else. Suggestions anyone please?

Have you tried Pegasus Mail?

http://www.pmail.com/

I have Outlook Express which works fine for me.

I used to use that before Thunderbird 2. Not an option on Vista. I'm reluctant to use the Vista replacement "Windows Mail" because it is too proprietary... in other words if my Vista PC dies all my email is effectively lost because it can't be opened on an XP computer.

You can read Outlook Express email using Vista's Windows Mail but not the other way around.

When I looked at Windows Mail it immediately raised my blood pressure because I couldn't just paste in my passwords for my email accounts. Instead it insisted on them being typed in... and all my passwords are fiendishly long and random - not nice to type. Grrrr! Unnecessary restrictions like that irritate me.

Last edited by TallyMan on 07 Jan 2010, 4:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I had a look on the website, but get the impression it is a bit dated and maybe too proprietary again. I really like open source if possible. I'm not keen on having all my emails stored in a proprietary format which is tied to a particular vendor. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Here's one that's open source:

http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/

Windows version is here:

http://www.dipconsultants.com/evolution/

I can understand your frustration. The only other one I'm familiar with is gmail though I don't use it, and yahoo which I don't like. Are either of those an option?

Yar I am pretty sure GMail can check your POP3 accounts and thus can be used as an interface.

You might try Seamonkey.

It's been a couple of years since I gave up on mail clients and settled down to the web mail interface that my service provider offers.

Except at work, of course, where Outlook is mandatory. Even there, though, webmail gets me to my personal inbox.

I thought the e-mail account config was basically the same in Thunderbird 3 as it was in TB2? The only difference I noticed was less pain when I needed to connect to an Exchange server.

You might try Lau's suggestion of Seamonkey. The current Seamonkey 2 is basically Firefox 3.5 combined with a mail client that seems to be somewhere in between Thunderbird 2 and 3.

Not sure if they run in Windows, but if you're looking for open-source mail clients Evolution and Kmail aren't bad.

Ironically I've just spent the last hour cursing Gmail! I've received several complaints from people over the last few weeks saying I haven't sent them a licence code for shareware software they have bought off my website. They were all Gmail users. It turns out Gmail has deleted the registration emails I sent to them! It hasn't even put the emails in their spam folders - it has simply deleted them! I've now had to update my website warning people not to use Gmail for their contact email address when placing orders.
False (spam) positives and dumping legitimate email into a spam folder is one thing - but deleting emails is ridiculous.

Last edited by TallyMan on 08 Jan 2010, 6:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'll investigate seamonkey as suggested. Thanks.

You can always install back Thunderbird 2.

I had another go with Thunderbird 3 and finally cracked it. After specifying the new email account the automatic feature assumes it is an IMAP account instead of POP3. Even after selecting POP3 it changes it back to IMAP after a split second! It also changes the port number itself automatically contra to what I enter. You have to very quickly select POP3 and before it changes it back to IMAP click manual setup - then you are asked the right questions for the connection. It is a bit of a wrestling match though to get POP3 to stay long enough on screen. There are clearly some bugs in the automation feature because when you click "stop" it is supposed to stop guessing the connection settings - but clearly doesn't.

Mozilla stuff is open source I think.
I think I really have to "fix" the code soon,
because it is doing stuff I told it not to do.