Tbird In, Tbird Out

Email clients can be very personal things when you use them all the time. I’ve been using Eudora for a lot of years (a LOT of years). It has always been feature-full, so for a long time, there really wasn’t any other good alternative. Unfortunately, it also has some quirks—a criminal deficiency in HTML composition (I almost never use it, but when you need it, you need it); and a versions-long bug in the statistics module that Qualcomm (the makers of Eudora) knows about, but has never seemed to getting around to fixing. It’s also not freeware. Given that a number of very capable and no-cost options are now available, I decided to take a look.

In the end, I settled on Thunderbird. It’s well-reviewed, people like it, and it has most of the features that I like. So, I spent a few hours installing and configuring it. And after playing with it, I’ve gone back to Eudora. Why? A huge factor is the UI. Eudora’s is really that much better. Thunderbird’s is similar to the other options I’ve tried in the past. Plus, there isn’t quite the granularity of options that I’d like. Some things (like text emails vs HTML emails) I’d like to be able to override on a per-message basis. That’s not really an option. There were a few more little things like that. While for most people they probably seem trivial, but when you need non-aggravating software, it’s the little things that can drive you most insane.

So, for the time being, I’m sticking with Eudora. I do have to decide if I want to pay to get the version upgrade (they have sponsored and free modes, but then Eudora becomes crippleware); is it worth it to me? Certainly, as time goes on, Eudora has increased stability problems (furkin’ spammers), but it’s not yet to the point where it’s a significant problem. We’ll see.