Many people are not aware of mail client programs such as Thunderbird. There used to be a time before the advent of the popular web-based e-mail systems such as gmail and yahoo mail when the only way to access e-mail was with an e-mail client program like Thuderbird. Now, many people only know about webmail and don’t even know about such programs.
Yet using such a program is a much better way to use e-mail. Why? Because with such a program, the mail is actually transferred to your computer (or computers if you have multiple). It makes working with mail much easier, and the features of mail programs like Thunderbird go way beyond what is offered through webmail services like gmail or yahoo mail. I therefore recommend to everyone to use an e-mail program. The popular ones that I know about are Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Windows Mail, and MS Outlook.
I have chosen to use Thunderbird because it is developed by an independent third-party, and can run on any platform – Windows, Mac, or Linux. It also supports a lot of plugins, such as the integrated calendar addon called Lightning. I have yet to determine whether using Lightning for calendaring is the most versatile option. There are also a lot of other useful addons like one that can remove duplicate messages, some which can alter the display of messages, and some which add various types of features to the program.
Just recently I started using a second computer system in addition to the main one I use. The additional system is more portable and lightweight. I want to have the ability to take a small system with me, but still have access to all my data and especially my e-mail. The trick to doing this was to use Thunderbird on both machines and configure it to access my gmail account using IMAP. IMAP allows the e-mail messages to be stored centrally on the main gmail system where my account is hosted, amd both my client machines can access the mail when they need to.
It is even better than this though. Say for example that I decided to create a new folder to sort some of my mail on one of the machines I use. After I create the folder and put messages into it, it will automatically synchronize through IMAP with the central gmail system and that folder and all the messages in it will automatically be available on the other computer! Totally brilliant!
Now I can read my mail anywhere using the Thunderbird client program with all its features, and read and process the mail, and not have to worry about it being out of sync with the other computer.
The next things I am working on are what is the best way for keeping a calendar across multiple computers, and also documents. The document issue is interesting because I like to write a daily journal and have a copy on both machines. Obviously it gets out of sync when I make edits to the journal on one machine. What is the best way to keep a journal so that I can edit it from any machine and it will always be automatically synchronized with other machines? Hopefully I will know soon…
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