Is Thunderbird the only decent Outlook alternative?

My Outlook is fried and Outlook Express is not the answer I am looking for. Heck I am not sure it will even work at this point. Is Thunderbird the hands down winner as an Outlook replacement? Are there any others? I am not against paying a fair amount for an email client. Of course, a free option would be nice as well.

thanks

 

I guess that depends on what you are looking for in a client. There used to be an excellent app called Mail Warrior, but I believe it is no longer in developement. There are other good clients, such as Iscribe, that I've used in the past. But again, I would need to know what features you are looking for in order to help you more. I can say this, once I started using Opera's M2 I was set; I will never use anything else.

 

I've been researching this topic recently, so far only third-hand (reviews and other people experiences) and, apart from Thunderbird, I narrowed my focus to:

The two for-payment apps enjoying the best reputation:
The Bat!
http://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/
PocoMail
http://www.pocosystems.com/home/index.php?option=content&task=category&sectionid=2&id=7&Itemid=25

The two freeware apps that seem to have a hard-core group of supporters:
Mulberry
http://www.mulberrymail.com/
Pegasus Mail
http://www.pmail.com/

Again, an essential ingredient is missing from this - and that is direct experience!

 

I looked at Opera mail many versions ago and was not impressed with its email and settled on Pocomail instead. The advantage with Poco and The Bat is that they have their own html rendering engine so that any code that comes in on a dodgy email does not go outside the program. I think their are other email progs that do this also - Calypso comes to mind. I think, though stand to be corrected, that Thunderbird and Opera are not so safe since they are linked to their browsers.

 

Evolution probably comes closest to what you are looking for:

http://shellter.sourceforge.net/evolution/

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=159440&package_id=194380&release_id=492523

Another interesting 'Outlook killer' candidate is Chandler:

http://chandlerproject.org/

 

Thunderbird does not do all that Outlook does, but it is good for email.
I use Thunderbird for email, Outlook only when I need to program within Office.

Why is your Outlook fried?
What version of Office?
What if you re-install Office?

 

I tried Evolution one or two years ago and found it extremely slow, but this may have changed in the meantime.

In Windows I use Thunderbird, in Linux Kmail.

 

Ejvolution interface looks good but I have no clue as to templates capabilities. i use a lot of templates for my email and TheBat! has been the best at this so far.

Gary

 

As some others have already asked, I think it depends on what you want/need.

Outlook 2003 was the first version I actually liked and would have considered using. (It's junk mail filter is quite good too.) But I didn't buy Office 2003 and from what I see, Office 2007 (with the wonderful (full sarcasm mode) Ribbon interface) is not something I'm interested in at this stage.

If you are talking Vista, Windows Mail looks ok. It has a very similar Junk mail filter to Outlook so spam is controlled quite well.

I run Thunderbird at home and on a couple PCs at work. I really like it. The Junk mail filter works quite well after just a couple days of training. The only bump in the road I've had with T-Bird has been with the compacting of the mail boxes. You should make sure the auto-compact routine is on or do it regularly by hand. If you don't, T-Bird can slow down, not actually delete emails (even though it says it has) and so forth. (FWIW, once I figured out how to set things, I've never had anymore issues.)

 

I use Thunderbird, because I can split it over two partitions easily :
system partition (software) and data partition (email and email-addressbooks).

I don't like to lose my emails of TODAY and previous days, when my system partition is totally destroyed or corrupted.

 

I'd give Evolution a shot and see how it looks now.. I hate Thunderbird, it's slow, annoying, and nowhere near as good as Outlook IMO.

 

Outlook 2003 is fine for me. I do occasionally think about changing but any alternative would have to have an integrated Todo list to even be considered.

 

Can you do a "repair" of Outlook? If not, give Pegasus Mail a good lookin' over. I used it for years w/ zero issues. I believe David Harris (developer) died recently, but his work is being carried on.

I use Outlook 2003 on my main box. Just installed trial of Office 2007 on the lappy. Don't know if I can deal w/ the ribbons though

...screamer

Oh yeah... Then there's Eudora.

 

I tried the "repair" but only had limited positive results. Outlook will boot up but I cannot get it to connect out to my email accounts. It is like it is a dead link in the program or something.

 

To make a long story short- I have Office Enterprise 2007. I was doing a defrag with Paragon which I had to stop. That must have somehow deleted some Windows files or something. I had to reinstall my OS and reinstall Office. Outlook initially would not open but after doing the repair and diagnostic check Outlook finally got to where it would open. Now there are problems adding email accounts to Outlook. When I click on the link to add an account nothing happens- like the link is dead or something.

So I am at the point where I may reinstall Office without Outlook and get a separate email client. I previously had Office Professional 2003 and tried to reinstall that but Outlook would not even boot up in that program.

So far Pegasus and Evolution are looking like the final two candidates.

As for reinstalling Office again without installing Outlook- I guess that is the way to go for now. Any suggestions would be appreciated. And thanks everyone for the other email client suggestions as they have been very helpful.

 

You do have other candidates too, like DreamMail, Sylpheed and those are free.
Else you've PocoMail's big brother, namely Barca, which includes a PIM.
Both are not free.

A lot of email clients to be found, whether free or paid.
It just depends on finding the one which you like working with.

Try them out, so you'll know which one wins you over.

 

Have you considered doing a total clean install again. I know it'sa pain in the ass, but if you paid for an app / suite, you should be able to use it.

...screamer

 

I wish I would have done that instead of the reinstall from HP. It did take a lot of time with updating all the programs as well as the MS updates. If I would have paid full price for MS Office Enterprise I would probably be flipping out right now but I got it as part of the MS home use program so it was only around $20 which included shipping.

 

Once you get set up again, an image is a good idea. I do that here, and can recover from any disaster in 10 minutes. Makes life so much nicer...

 

Yes. That was part of the master plan, right after the defrag. Things did not work out as planned though.

 

Hm, I can't confirm this. I had used Outlook XP before and found Thunderbird fast (especially when applying HAN's hint in post #9) and user-friendly. You can add a lot of useful extensions, and its spamfilter is really good.

Evolution was considerably slower when I tried it but, again, that may have changed in newer versions.

 

You can also do that that with other programs.

 

I use Thunderbird in both Linux and Windows, which allows me to sahre, e.g., mailboxes and certain other things, between the OS.

 

I also used Thunderbird in Linux at first but switched to Kmail after a while as it is very easy to integrate other spam filters (like Bogofilter or Spamassassin) and AV programs (while I consider a AV unnecessary in Linux in general, I still scan my emails with the free Avira AntiVir). But it's true - your approach has advantages.

 

THe main adavantages top using te same email program in both Linux and Windoze are:

1. Sharing mailboxes.
2. Sharing address book.
3. Sharing filters. In particular, I have any filters and I'm not about to waste time maintaining two sets of filters, ome for a windoze prog, anoter for a linux prog.