12-14-2007, 09:40 AM

I hear good things about Thunderbird but how does it compare with Leopard mail?

12-14-2007, 10:32 AM

This is an interesting issue. Both Mail.app and Thunderbird are excellent email applications.

I don't think a direct comparison is necessarily the best way to approach this. At a very high level, Mail.app is a beautiful feature filled mail app that is well integrated with the rest of OS X. Thunderbird is a standards based multi platform (i.e. works with a wide variety of OS', hence not custom integrated to any one of them) mail app. It is also very feature filled and quite attractive in its own right, although it doesn't really exhibit a classic Mac look n feel.

Thunderbird stores its email in industry standard .mbx format. Mail.app uses a proprietary Mac format. You can convert from the one to the other with some effort, but the fact that Mail.app uses a proprietary format remains.

You can easily move your Thunderbird email boxes from Mac OS X to Windows or to Linux. It is as simple as copying one directory from its Mac location to its Windows or Linux location and you are done. I do this myself quite often, since I work in a mixed Mac, Windows and Linux environment.

On the other hand, Spotlight indexes all the contents of your mail messages, making Spotlight searches of them a breeze. This in fact is why it uses a non standard format - to enable Spotlight. Also, the Leopard version of Mail.app sports some lovely stationary - Thunderbird doesn't seem to support this yet. Odd, since as long ago as Windows ME, Outlook Express supported this very visually attractive feature.

In the end, it is up to you. If you are concerned about easy transportability of your emails, go with Thunderbird. If you are looking for excellent integration with Mac OS X, go with Mail.app. Both of them are excellent email apps. This is not a choice between good and bad, but rather between good and good.

12-14-2007, 10:38 AM

Hi thanks for the reply m8.

I cant for the life of me get leopard to receive incoming mail. I have been onto my ISP and the tech support line and nothing. I have bought Office 2004 mac and heard there was an email client known as entourage on there.

I set entourage and it works straight away. Needless to say Leopard mail is now binned. Annoying to lose two hours to leopards mail. This is exactly why I switched from XP. Cant moan though as this is the first prob Ive had so far.


Incidendently the email notification re your reply to my post is the first Mac email I have ever received :]

12-14-2007, 11:35 AM

Might want to look in the MS Entourage as well. I've been using an Exchange server for some time and I don't think Mail.app has full Exchange support.

12-14-2007, 12:03 PM

I think Mac57's post is excellent and good advice. I'll add a few things though.

Thunderbird is something I used for almost 3 years on the PC and I had a great experience from it, but the problem is that it doesn't integrate Calendars and Tasks very well (or it didn't in 2004) and the so called 'industry standard' mbx files, are actually not that standard at all. Lotus Notes, Apple Mail, Outlook etc, none of these use it. It's standard amongst the small name email clients, most of which are awful. In fact something that always annoyed me about Thunderbird was that it was excellent and importing mail from any other client, Outlook, Outlook Express etc, but getting it to work the other way around was REALLY painful.

I use Entourage though, and whilst Entourage 2004 is a little slow thanks to Rosetta, the 2008 version (out in January) is very quick and looks a lot more Leopard like. I think it's the most complete eMail application for the Mac.

12-14-2007, 12:31 PM

Just a clarification to the above. Thunderbird's .mbx format fully follows the MBX standard. This makes importing of Thunderbird mail into any other standards compliant mailers a breeze.

That having been said however, I agree that importing Thunderbird (or in fact any other .mbx formatted) email into Mac Mail can be a bit of a pain. Mac Mail tends to be really picky about these things. Email boxes that are imported with no issue into other mailers fails on Mac Mail. Outlook/Entourage don't use MBX format (again, use their own proprietary format) and so importing there also tends to be an issue.

So, Zoolook raises an interesting issue. In selecting a mailer, you almost have to chose your email "domain of interest". If you want to run standard MBX formatted email, so that you can move the results around from mailer to mailer and platform to platform, you effectively restrict yourself to a set of mailers that does not include the two "biggies" in the consumer space, which are Mac Mail and Microsoft Outlook Express. If you are OK to go platform specific, you can use either of the above "biggies" and take advantage of all their bells and whistles.

There is no completely universal email solution because email client vendors have not embraced a uniform email standard. MBX format is the closest we have to a universal standard, but as the above painfully points out, it is not a universally used format.

12-14-2007, 04:39 PM

I just got my iMac. I have been using the leopard mail for the past few days and like it. I used to use thunderbird. I would prefer to stay with leopard but can't seem to get leopard's mail to delete my messages from my email site. (Not sure how to word that, lol) When thunderbird pulled my email if I were to login directly to my email the messages would be gone because thunderbird had already pulled them. I would prefer leopard mail to do the same. Is this possible?

Sorry, for the hijack. I didn't want to start another thread for the question. Hope no one minds.

12-14-2007, 04:43 PM

Originally Posted by dodson914

I just got my iMac. I have been using the leopard mail for the past few days and like it. I used to use thunderbird. I would prefer to stay with leopard but can't seem to get leopard's mail to delete my messages from my email site. (Not sure how to word that, lol) When thunderbird pulled my email if I were to login directly to my email the messages would be gone because thunderbird had already pulled them. I would prefer leopard mail to do the same. Is this possible?

Sorry, for the hijack. I didn't want to start another thread for the question. Hope no one minds.

There is a setting somewhere that specifies whether mail is deleted from the server or not, within Mail.

12-14-2007, 04:47 PM

With Thunderbird, you can keep all images from appearing in the mail, including spam pix loaded with web bugs (or HTML, one or the other; it's been so long I can't recall. Can't do that with Mail — that function was removed after Jaguar, if I recall, which is why, when I was running OS X (and, hopefully, will again, soon) I stuck with Thunderbird.

12-14-2007, 04:52 PM

Mail.app won't load images in mail it considers to be junk.

12-14-2007, 05:01 PM

Originally Posted by Zoolook

There is a setting somewhere that specifies whether mail is deleted from the server or not, within Mail.

I checked the mail preferences and couldn't find anything in there about this.

If anyone knows how to get it to do this can you please pm me or post it here. Thanks

12-14-2007, 05:40 PM

Try opening preferences in mail, then clicking accounts and opened up advanced. There you should be able to set up m,ail so it removes messages from the server when it comes into mac mail.

12-14-2007, 05:56 PM

Incidentally, here is how to get .mbox files out of Mail.

12-14-2007, 05:58 PM

Originally Posted by cycler48

Try opening preferences in mail, then clicking accounts and opened up advanced. There you should be able to set up m,ail so it removes messages from the server when it comes into mac mail.

Thanks so much. I guess I never noticed the tabs on that screen. I was going crazy with this. I would read them on the computer and then 1 minute later my phone is beeping saying I have a message. Thanks again.