Michael Dale
I really dislike outlook 2003. It has some nice features but some of the things it does is just crazy.
When you send an email from your account (I have 2 different email addresses setup with it) all sent items appear in the local folder. So my sent items are not stored on my IMAP server. That is pretty lame. I have no idea how to get around this.
The other big problem is it has trouble if it cannot connect to all the mail servers. It will lock up and die. Then I’ll need to restart the program and it will need to cache all the headers again. Biggest annoying thing ever. I don’t like it.
Anyway a few months ago I tried Thunderbird (version 0.8 I think) and it didn’t seem all that much better, but today I decided to switch over to it. The first reason was as above, OE sucks but the second reason is a bit more interesting.
OpenPGP support. Outlook doesn’t have a plugin to support PGP (Outlook Express does, just not Outlook). PGP is a way of encrypting your data and it isn’t just restricted to emails.
You have a public key and a private key. You give your public key out to people. If they want to send you something that is encrypted they use your public key. This means that only the person who has the private key can decrypt the email or file.
Thunderbird has a plugin that you can download called enigmail (http://enigmail.mozdev.org/) that handles OpenPGP very nicely. You can sign your emails, encrypt and decrypt them automatically. Pretty cool.
So if you have PGP key email me your public key. Mine is as follows:
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32) - WinPT 0.7.96rc1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=8aSi
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
My contact page (http://blog.dalegroup.net/contact/#pgp) now also includes a copy of my public key if needed.