"If you've lately taken to
cursing at your current e-mail program,
then I suggest you give Thunderbird a try. It's the best
thing to happen to e-mail in a long time.” - Forbes
“This surprisingly full-featured open-source program
is a snap to use...” - PC World
“[Thunderbird] is better than Outlook...it has all
the
features that matter.” - IT Director
Thunderbird™ 1.0.7 , from the non-profit Mozilla Foundation,
makes emailing safer, faster, and easier than ever before with the
industry's best implementations of features such as intelligent spam filters, a built-in spell
checker, extension support, and much more.
To run the Thunderbird Installer, please click the install button below and run the exe file. Installation should take about 2 minutes. Afterwards you can use Thunderbird as is, or come back to this page to learn about its features and try some themes.
If you have Windows XP SP2 it will give you a warning. Just click run. If that does not work, just go to your Desktop and click on My Computer, and select the CD-ROM drive. From there just go to the Thunderbird directory and click on Thunderbird Setup 1.0.7.exe.
Just like in Firefox, Thunderbird will ask you to import any existing email from, for example Outlook Express. Not only will Thunderbird import your email, but also your address book and other settings. If you have no existing mail, it will then ask if you wish to set up an account. You can also get to the menu from the Tools menu by clicking Accounts and Settings and clicking Add Account. This is where new accounts are set up. You should enter the details given to you by your mail server.
Tired of spam and annoying advertising in your Inbox? Thunderbird removes spam and helps keep your Inbox clean. Thunderbird provides the most effective tools for detecting junk mail. Our tools analyze your e-mail and identify those that are most likely to be junk. You can have your junk mail automatically deleted or put in a specific folder.
Thunderbird also has filters that learn what is likely to be spam based on the emails that you mark as junk. To activate the adaptive Junk Mail filters, go to Tools > Junk Mail Controls... , click the Adaptive Filters tab and check the Enable adaptive junk mail detection option. Whenever you receive a junk email, select it and press the Junk button in the toolbar to mark it as junk and Thunderbird will learn from this what to filter and what not to filter.
View your e-mail the way you want it. Choose between three unique message views, "Classic View", "Wide View" and "Vertical View". Select your toolbar layout. Customize your toolbar buttons and use the "View" option to quickly sort through your e-mail. These options and an intuitive layout makes you more productive and efficient, which is what Thunderbird is all about.
There's no need for third-party spell checking software. Thunderbird comes with an integrated spell checker. All you need to do is to click on the Spell button in the toolbar and Thunderbird will do the work for you.
Unlike many other products, Thunderbird doesn't allow scripts to run by default. This results in a more secure product than other email programs on the market and helps stop the spreading of worms and viruses on the Web. Thunderbird provides enterprise and government grade security features such as S/MIME, digital signing, message encryption, support for certificates and security devices.
Just like in Firefox, you can change the appearance of Thunderbird to fit your taste. Themes allow you to change the way Thunderbird looks using new graphics and colors. This CD includes some sample themes that can be installed from this CD, but there are many more available on Mozilla Update.
How powerful do you want your email program to be? With extensions, you decide!
When first installed, Thunderbird includes the most used features in a mail program, but doesn't include the features that are only used by a few people. This keeps the program simple and fast for everyone. If you feel that you are missing something, Thunderbird lets you add additional features through extensions. Extensions allow you to tailor Thunderbird email to meet your specific needs, selecting the features you use and avoiding those you don't. This CD doesn't yet contain extensions for Thunderbird (it will in the future), but you can go online and take a look at the various extensions available at Mozilla Update.
Thunderbird is not just an email program, it also
includes a fully-integrated RSS (like Live Bookmarks in Firefox) and
newsgroup (chat forums) reader! It supports all the basic functions,
such as subscribing to your favorite news feeds, downloading messages,
offline support and topic watching/ignoring.
You start an RSS feed account (or a newsgroup account) the same way as an email account. Go to the Tools menu then click A ccounts and Settings then Add Account. This time select RSS News (or Newsgroups account). You need to enter the address of some feeds under Manage Subscriptions in order to use it. Here's one for the BBC World News feed to start with: http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/front_page/rss.xml .
Almost every
email program allows you to search your Inbox, so does Thunderbird. But
Thunderbird goes further. You can save your search as a Saved
Search Folder, which contains the results of your search.
Thunderbird will keep the contents of this folder up-to-date even after
new mail arrives. For example: if you want to have a handy list of all
email from your buddy Joe, you simply go to the File menu and
choose New > Saved Search.... Then give the new
folder a name and select the location where you want to save it. Select
the folders you want to search and enter the search parameters. For
example, for all email sent by Joe you could use Sender is
joe@buddy.com. Click OK, and your Saved Search
Folder will be created. Any email sent by Joe will be shown if you
select the newly created folder.
For more help visit the Thunderbird Help page.
There aren't as many resources for Thunderbird as for Firefox. Obviously giving out this CD is a great method, or you can try out this PDF flyer.
This CD was compiled by the Firemonger project. The creators of this CD are developing this value-added distribution of Mozilla Firefox as an independent community run project. Official versions of Mozilla Firefox are available from the Mozilla Foundation at http://www.mozilla.org. Mozilla, Firefox, and the Mozilla and Firefox Logos are trademarks of the Mozilla Foundation in the United States, EU and other countries. Used with permission.