jasun's blog

Mozilla over MS?

For POP3 I've always used Outlook Express on the Windows box, but recently I have been having a few problems in that some messages don't download and seem to hang the client. I've not figured out why, but they all seem to be destined for the same address, so I've just added local rules to ensure they are not downloaded. Also, the local rules don't seem to be working now, for some reason.

At work I currently use Evolution on Solaris, which is another nice client.
I've decided to give Mozilla Thunderbird a go on the Windows system at home. It seems to have the same problem with hanging on those certain spam emails, but that aside, it's a lot better. Another reason for me switching, is the total lack of proper spam filtering in Outlook Express.

Hopefully once trained Thunderbird will do a good job. Server side filtering is an option, which I will get round to, but having all mail delivered is better in some respects as it allows you to see all mail still, even emails that have been classified as junk - they might not be. Using server side filtering you don't really get this freedom unless you are alerted to blocked messages to check.

I've used 3rd party applications for local fltering, but have not found them to be any better, so using a built in function like in Thunderbird, should work just as well if not better.

Also, due to all the recent issues with IE, I'm probably going to start using Mozilla Firefox more. IE is lacking in a lot of features, such as tabbed browing, saved sessions and a lot more, Firefox and other good alternatives such as Opera fill these gaps in functionality. There are a whole host of things needed, MS really need to work on getting IE and Outlook back up there, by adding much needed functions that can be found in all the alternatives.

It's funny that the Microsoft offerings are still the most popular - due to the fact that they are bundled with Windows by default and are not better than the rest, but just easily available.