On the downside, the app is lacking some finesse in certain areas. Whats more, Mozilla has finally given Thunderbird a real OS X look and feel rather than just a clone of the Windows version as in previous releases.

One of the biggest selling points of Mozilla Thunderbird is, due to the launch of Snow Leopard, that it now offers Microsoft Exchange support, meaning it will appeal to Office users who previously discounted it. Security updates are regular but small so as not to slow-down Thunderbird. The reason being is that Thunderbird is regularly updated and crafted by volunteers who's main interest is making a better product rather than profiting from an end-product. So what about security? You might think an open source mail client would inherently be less secure than a paid one but Thunderbird is surprisingly secure, with a fairly bulletproof spam filter. Archiving is also another handy feature for those that don't want to delete messages but want to clear space in their inbox.

This is a fantastic feature of Thunderbird, although does tempt you to have too many mails open at once.

Tabs in general are a very big part of Thunderbird and like Firefox, you can have multiple messages open in separate tabs. Search results are displayed in a separate tab. The search tool in Thunderbird is excellent and searches happen in real time as you type. Nowadays, this is a little outdated because many people use a separate application - or even Firefox itself - to follow RSS feeds but it may be useful if you only want to mail and follow RSS feeds at the same time when composing mails. What makes Mozilla Thunderbird slightly more unusual is the fact that it comes with an integrated RSS reader. And of course, there's a built-in spell checker to make sure that your mails are professionally crafted. To stay well organized, Mozilla Thunderbird offers filters to deliver your mail into separate folders and inboxes. You can quickly import your mail and contacts from your Outlook or Mail account and set up POP3, IMAP or SMTP accounts in a flash. Setting up Mozilla Thunderbird is painless. It's also now much faster and more stable than before due to the Gecko 5 engine.

The fact that like Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird can be beefed up with all manner of extensions makes it an extremely competitive mail client.

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