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TheBat English » The Bat! - Configuring the E-mail Client
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Ex-Thunderbird user around ?
 
#1
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I have been using TheBat since January 2002 and I am trying Thunderbird on another machine.
What would I be missing If move from TheBat to Thunderbird ?

Jean-Luc
 
 
 
#2
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Imo sorting/templates/macros in theBat are far better. Also you'll be missing tons of small thingies that may seem insignificant at first sight but make your life easier.
Thunderbird is a typical open source freeware, it just can't compare to a good commercial product. Always has that 'almost finished' feel, lots of bugs, often crashes etc.. It's good if you have to deal with a couple of mails daily, but in no case for extensive use.

But of course you should compare for yourself and see if it's suitable for your way of handling email.
 
 
 
#3
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Don't do it!

I've been using Netscape, then Tbird since I started surfing in 98. Netscape started giving me trouble with having to rebuild databases a year or so ago so I upgraded to Tbird. The last several months it's been doing the same thing. A few weeks ago I decided I have to switch and decided to go with paid software. I tried out several mail programs and decided to go with The Bat! and am now in the process of gradually switching all my accounts over.

I haven't even given the program a full inspection yet and have found enough to know it's better. I especially like its search options. I do that a lot and that's where Tbird keeps having trouble. It was always having to rebuild databases, and yes I kept them compacted and used multiple folders. I have 11 POP accounts, a few hundred folders, and 10-20,000 emails. Tbird probably won't give you much trouble if you deal with a lot less email, but it definitely doesn't have the features of The Bat!.
 
 
 
#4
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What 'e said. DON'T DO IT!!!

Four years ago, I went from EudoraPro (paid) due to bloat and moved to TB.

This weekend, I decided to move on and after reading reviews of PocoMail and The Bat!, I tried out both of them and decided to make the plunge to The Bat!

The hardest part was figuring out how to export my TB emails intact. After I figured out that out (The Bat! docs on this are rubbish btw), I painstakingly exported all my emails (some going back to 1992).

The only thing I lost were my message labels but I can live with that I suppose.

As a commercial developer myself, Open Source is both a blessing and a curse. TB has become bloated and instead of focusing on fixing bugs and general functionality, they're just adding more bloat to it. I mean, who needs a newsreader in an email program? Some of the logged bugs go back to 2002 and remain unfixed.

People are constantly losing emails (I was one of those. Good thing that I'm a backup fanatic!), functionality etc. Its a mess. Trust me, you do not want to go there.

I just moved over 25GB of email. Not a hitch. 'nuff said.
 
 
 
#5
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So far I think the difference between The Bat! and Tbird that I find the most useful is how The Bat! lets you rearrange your folders, and even your accounts, by just moving them. In Tbird, the folders were alphabetical, so the ones I wanted first had to start with _ and the ones I wanted ahead of them __ and so on, and if I wanted to change the order of the accounts, I had to edit the prefs file.

The Bat! must have improved in the last 2 years because I tried it out a couple years ago and for some reason I stuck with Netscape, but now I'm glad I switched.
 
 
 
#6
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Absolutely! I had to do the same thing as you!! By using the underscore character to move a folder to the top of the tree.

I too checked out the Bat! back when I was looking to move from Eudora and didn't like it much. Hence the reason I moved to TB.
 
 
 
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