The first version of the Mozilla Foundation's Thunderbird was a serviceable e-mail client. The latest version may be a great one.

At first, Thunderbird Version 1.0 made a good impression. On a longer acquaintance, however, problems such as poor search functionality and memory leaks tarnished its reputation. Now, with Thunderbird 1.5, the program stands poised to regain its good name and far, far more.

New features of the software include an automated update feature to streamline product upgrades. Notification of an update is more prominent, and updates to Thunderbird may now be half a megabyte or smaller. Updating extensions has also improved, says Mozilla.

Other new features include a sort address autocomplete which results by how often you send e-mail to each recipient, spelling checker, the Saved Search Folders can now search across multiple accounts, and a built-in phishing detector is designed to help protect you against e-mail scams.

Podcasting and other RSS improvements have been made, you can now delete attachments from messages and integrate the software with server-side spam filtering, reply and forward actions for message filters, and auto save messages as draft for mail composition. Kerberos Authentication is now included, there are filters for the Global Inbox, and improvements to product usability include redesigned options interface and SMTP server management.

Thunderbird provides enterprise and government grade security features including S/MIME, digital signing, message encryption, support for certificates and security devices. Attachments are never run without your express permission, protecting you from many worms and viruses.

Each e-mail you receive passes through Thunderbird’s leading-edge junk mail filters. Each time you mark messages as spam, Thunderbird improves its filtering so you can spend more time reading the mail that matters. Thunderbird will also use your mail provider’s spam filters to keep junk mail out of your inbox.

The 6MB program can be downloaded for free from www.mozilla.com/thunderbird. It runs on Windows, Mac OS and Linux systems.

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BIOS, Jan 12, 06 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Internet