Comments on: Thunderbird 2 vs. Outlook 2007: Who Will Wear the Crown?

By: Smartie

Smartie — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 14:14:46 +0000

I think there’s not much point in comparing the features of Outlook vs Thunderbird, as people have pointed out above, Thunderbird is closer to Outlook Express than Outlook. HOWEVER, an awful lot of people are using Outlook without Exchange support and so are not making best use of what is a mediocre product without Exchange. The reason I call Outlook mediocre is for one overriding factor, irrespective of feature set:- it is rubbish at storing more than a couple of gbs of emails effectively. Having spent the bast part of the last week (I’m in IT support) listening to complaints from my users and then running scanpst and compacting folders, and having to advise people to get rid of unnecessary emails, it is clear and simple that Outlook works best with Exchange. Without it, the feature set is not rich (no better than Thunderbird’s) and you have the drawback that if your pst exceeds about 3gb, then you WILL have problems sooner or later. For that reason, I say Thunderbird wins, and if Outlook used mbox files instead of pst then it would be a much better (because more reliable) product.

By: Rajesh GOutam

Rajesh GOutam — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:28:02 +0000

hello,
I have not much idea on this.. just trying to use Thunderbird…and felling its a really good application for developers in Firefox.

Thanks

By: Nicolas Liaudat

Nicolas Liaudat — Fri, 21 May 2010 08:46:58 +0000

You confuse Outlook and M$Exchange! Outlook without M$Exchange can almost do anything of that above.

Can I use Thunderbird to schedule meetings with co-workers? No, but outlook cannot without M$Exchange.
View my co-workers calenders? No, but outlook cannot without M$Exchange.
Assign a task to one of my employees or keep track of my own tasks? No, but outlook cannot without M$Exchange.
Will Thunderbird integrate with Active Directory ? No, but outlook cannot without M$Exchange.
Can you send instant messages with Thunderbird ? What is the point?
Does Thunderbird have built in support for RSS feeds? YES
Can you share contact information with Thunderbird? YES (Ldap)

By: Carl Hobbs

Carl Hobbs — Wed, 12 May 2010 18:07:22 +0000

Well Ryan, you have aprovided a concise and well informed review for me to make an informed choice between the two – and as I do not use Exchange or Sharepoint, nor do I need Synced calendars, other people’s calendars, and many of the other features included in Outlook, I believe my choice is pretty clear.

Now, where’s the “Export Outlook emails and account settings to Thunderbird” option……

CH, UK.

By: Carl Hobbs

Carl Hobbs — Wed, 12 May 2010 18:06:35 +0000

well Ryan, you have aprovided a concise and well informed review for me to make an informed choice between the two – and as I do not use Exchange or Sharepoint, nor do I need Synved calendars, other people’s calendars, and many of the othe features included in Outlook, I believe my choice is pretty clear.

Now, where’s the “Export Outlook emails and account settings to Thunderbird” option……

CH, UK.

By: Charlie O'Hearn

Charlie O'Hearn — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:39:13 +0000

To compare Thuderbird to Outlook is rediculous. Although Outlook works well with POP and IMAP accounts it works best as intended, with Exchange. The integration with AD in a corporate environment including calendars, SharePoint, Communicator, unified messaging, etc., not to mention syncing with compatible mobile devices is feature rich and nothing short of fantastic.
Nothing produced by anyone comes close.
I prefer that there were valid alternatives to this corporate messaging system (don’t anyone dare mention Domino/Notes) as competition is great for consumers, but there isn’t.
Thunderbird is a decent alternative to OE or other basic email application for those not on an Exchange server. The portability aspect of running Thunderbird from a flash drive is very cool, but if you don’t check that little box to leave messages on server, don’t lose it!

Charlie

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:34:37 +0000

Outlook is great when it works. I used to use Outlook 2007 on my office computer under XP Pro and it was great. Unfortunately, I had to switch to Thunderbird. Why? Because I recently got a new laptop with Vista, and I can assure you that Outlook 2007 is not an alternative under Vista. It is EXTREMELY slow and it crashes all the time. I’ve tried EVERYTHING possible but it still sucks ass (yes, I’ve disabled all the ad-ins; no, Outlook 2007 on my laptop is not an upgrade from 2003 and no, I do not have a particularily large number emails on the server). Bottom line: the software is not properly tested and it simply works very poorly under Vista (make a simple Google search and you’ll see that I’m hardly the only one with these problems). What about Thunderbird? No, it’s not as nice as Outlook but it works fine on both my machine so that’s what I’m currently using. With the Lighting Calendar, it’s (almost) comparable to Outlook. One thing is clear, it is much faster (also on the XP machine).

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 18:12:56 +0000

I do love having the Portable version of Thunderbird…it’s nice always having my email with me without needing to use webmail.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 13:11:27 +0000

There are some important -for some people- advantages in Thunderbird that as far as I know does not exist in outlook but is being missed here. I have a legit outlook 2007 which I haven’t used much so I may be wrong. I have an outlook 2002 at work and 2007 at home.

1- Portable Thunderbird. This is a good feature for carrying your entire email account without having a laptop. I can run thunderbird from the pen drive or copy/sync the directory to a machine and use it there. For example I was in the airport and found PCs with a usb connector and so I was able to check my emails. It is easy to backup and even mess around with a copy of the account.

2- I am not sure if outlook provides tagging but this feature can do wonders.

3- Thunderird have thread view, which I am not sure if outlook provide that or not.

I have not used outlook much but I know it has a lot of features like exchange server support which can be a must have for businesses but for some lite/personal use and specially considering the add-ons, it is a great alternative.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 17:51:39 +0000

In fact, that most people like thunderbird is only because it is free. They does not have enough money to buy Outlook so they cheat themselves by tell themselves and others repeatly that thunderbird is better, although it is extremely poor actually.