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[f0dder]

Hey!

In my hunt for anti-spam, I've decided to give ThunderBird a try at the museum I help out. Before I do so, I'd like to know if any of you have experiences with having a lot of mails in it? Currently, one of the people there has Outlook Express mailboxes of a gig or more, and I wonder if ThunderBird can import that, work with it, and still be reasonably fast?

[Josh]

I have an IMAP mailbox of around 450MB as of right now and thunderbird runs like a champ. By the way, this imap account is set to d/l each message, so they are all stored locally as well as remotely.

[dantheman]

Hey!

In my hunt for anti-spam, I've decided to give ThunderBird a try at the museum I help out. Before I do so, I'd like to know if any of you have experiences with having a lot of mails in it? Currently, one of the people there has Outlook Express mailboxes of a gig or more, and I wonder if ThunderBird can import that, work with it, and still be reasonably fast?

-f0dder (February 23, 2007, 04:30 AM)

If you have a zillion messages i would first set the options to not download any over 250ks at first then when i have some spare time i would download all completely.

Use MozBackup http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com to backup all your messages, contacts etc. afterwards.

If your email service has an archiving feature, i would use that to set aside messages of lesser importance or relevance.  Make sense?

[f0dder]

A zillion mails in the OE mailbox *on disk*, not on server - wouldn't be a problem if it was on server anyway, there's an 8mbit connection there. The issue is whether ThunderBird can handle a lot of mails efficiently... According to Josh, it probably will.

[dantheman]

I don't see why Thunderbird couldn't handle the load.
A quick search brought this up for importing from OE at: http://kb.mozillazin...from_Outlook_Express

My personal concern would be the Thunderbird "search" capabilities.
Is it as good as OE's? I haven't worked with OE in years!
Barca or recent Poco have a relatively good support of IMAP accounts (i did say "relatively") but their search feature IMO is quite simply unparalleled.

To me, the later could be a determining factor in a Museum context for quick access to information on large message boxes.   

[tinjaw]

The search capabilities in Thunderbird are as good as any. You can search on every field individually or in combination. And I haven't used anything but IMAP for the last 10 years, so it works fine with that. I can read an LDAP address book, but doesn't have much more LDAP support that that.

[dantheman]

All email programs have their plusses and minusses. 

Thunderbird
Pro: hightlighting feature.
Con: slow to find (compared to the other two here below) ;
you must search each email folder separately and again perform searches by selecting different options one by one.

Opera browser email client.
Pro: excellent search speed.
Con: no highlighting feature.

Poco or Barca
Pro: excellent search speed for all accounts in one single request.
Con: no hightlighting.

Of course, other things help to make a user opt for such and such an email client.  Alot depends on personal tastes.

[iphigenie]

I have used all 3 dantheman mentions. When it comes to spam filtering, all 3 are adequate but none are great.

I liked poco a lot, was a registered user through 2 versions. But the search never felt fast to me. Now I have a mail tree which nears 2Gb in size, so the speed issue is in part a size issue - poco had trouble with the sheer number of folders within folders and all the mail i have, and i had it lock up and crash in normal use several times a week.

Between that and my inability to make it work with imap (both fastmail and dovecot), I had to give up on poco and didnt upgrade. It always breaks my heart a bit when i have to give up on a program I have supported a long time and which does so many things right. I try new updates now and then in hope it gets better for me again.

Going from poco to thunderbird I just couldnt do it. I spent all the time importing all the mboxes (one by one) but I couldnt like it. It did seem to handle the size better, but I didnt use it long enough to really use the search etc. I just had this "what? it doesn't do that?" feeling a too many times - that purely comes from using something for 5 years and missing bits. I guess there's also the part of me that judged it compared to its hype. It is robust though, even with large numbers of messages. Didn't crash, handled imap...

The search felt weaker but I don't remember having to search folder by folder, i think that would have set me off ranting... I'm pretty sure it was able to search in both my imap folders and my poco-imported emails at the same time... but I could be wrong.

I currently use opera mail, have imported about 50% of my old messages, and its search is lovely. It's a quirky tool when it comes to organising, because it doesn't really use folders, just virtual organisation. So if you're the "lots of folders to classify things" type of person it won't be for you. I find that giving up on folders and having one big pot with live filtering and the option of saved searches works really well for me. Backup/export is weak on opera mail though and something that would prevent me from recommending it for many situations.

I still miss poco, and I am still considering trying a few more clients to try to find out a better one.

[dantheman]

iphigenie,

i can relate to your drama.
Actually, i'm using Barca 2.1.0.350 at the present time as a kind of backup as i tend to go back to Thunderbird for the IMAP support and the good "open source feeling" that it gives me.
This Barca version was a great improvement over all previous versions, especially with regards to IMAP and search capabilities.  The next version i am told will be coming out of the closet very soon.
I also love the backup/restore feature which has been flawless (especially with regards to filtering issues).
Mulberry imo is very quick but has a strong learning curve.
I'm keeping my eyes open on the next Eudora which has gone into the Open Source arena. What will the next version be like?  A combo TBird/Dora?

-p.s. i forgot to mention that i have about 4,000 messages stocked up in Barca

-also, seeing that we are in a "donationware" type forum, i would keep an eye open and also encourage PopPeeper.  A very small mail checker that checks practically any type of email account.  Search feature has yet to be implemented but i'm sure that if people here would post and encourage the programmer, things could go faster.

[iphigenie]

The good "open source" feeling doesn't do it for me. I have a good "support shareware" feeling and a "support freeware" and a "support independent developers" feeling too... 

Mulberry is freeware now, isn't it? Might try it, especially if you say it's fast. I had heard very good things about it but by the time i needed imap it was unavailable.

The biggest problem I have is finding a way to upload all my local mail mboxes to the imap server. I'd really like to do that, but when i have tried it the message always seems to get the date of the upload rather than the original date...

Anyway, that's something for a different thread.

[iphigenie]

To go back to the current topic, if someone has a mailbox of 1Gb or more it could be full of attachments. They are a slowdown opening the message but might not cause a slowdown in search and day to day use, and would not be a worry.

[Curt]

SPAMfighter is right now writing a version for Thunderbird.
Beta release date yet unknown.