thunderbird is dead

I’ve used thunderbird for my email client for a good number of years now. I have multiple accounts running in it – 7 at last count. When I started using tbird, it supported multiple account far better than any other client, and was the primary reason I started using it.

Recently there was news that mozilla is pulling a bunch (or all?) of the developers off the thunderbird project to assign them to other work. see https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-community-innovation/ 

Many interpreted this as the “death of thunderbird” blah blah. Maybe, maybe not.

But my own experience: over the last number of versions, the product has become increasing lower performing, to the point that it is almost unuseable for me now. Now I’m not a normal user, I have massive quantities of emails and multiple account, all connected via imap to their servers. But, earleir versions of tbird seemed to handle this ok. Not so anymore. I get a few emails open and actually start using the app, and it doesnt take long before it is hogging 100% of a cpu core, and doesn’t stop. Rebooting helps for a bit but not for long.

I’ve seen many complaints online about thunderbird hogging 100% of the cpu, so I know I’m not the only one. It’s unfortunate that this seems to have gotten worse instead of better over time.

So for my own purposes, thunderbird is already broken, and with the reduced emphasis on the product, won’t likely be fixed.

Anyone recommend a good replacement? Lawdy, am I going back to outlook after all these years?

Configure Thunderbird Filelink

Mozilla Thunderbird installed an update today, and one of the new features is the built-in ability to use a dropbox-type service for handling big files, instead of sending them as email attachments. The pages in Thunderbird that pops up to show new features lists this as one, but doesnt really show how to set it up. So, here is how:

 

-Click “Tools”, then “Options”

-Click the button “Attachments”, then “Outgoing”

-Click “Add”

-Enter your YouSendIt user info if you have it.

-Or, click the “Need a new account?” button if you don’t already have one, or click the following link to sign up – YouSendIt 14 Day Free Trial.

 

Looks like YouSendIt works best with one of the paid accounts, as the base one is somewhat size constrained… I’ll be watching for plugins to enable outer filelink providers, like dropbox etc.