(1) starter imageThunderbird is a cross-platform, open source e-mail client. It also offers news support. It was developed by Mozilla as a direct competitor to Microsoft Outlook. Since Outlook comes standard on most Windows operating systems, Mozilla had to offer something that enticed users to give them a try and stick with their program.

Thunderbird was originally released on December 7th, 2004 and was downloaded more than 500,000 times in the first three days. By day 10, Mozilla Thunderbird had over one million unique downloads.

Over the years, Thunderbird has improved its usability, functionality and added new features to make it an integrated part of a user’s life. In 2004, Project Lightning was announced which sought to bring a calendar to the program. With the development of Sunbird, Lightning is now an extension that fuses the two together for seamless integration.

Now, with the release of Thunderbird version 6.0, Mozilla is moving forward with keeping the e-mail client up to date and useful to everyone who uses it and those new to it.

What’s new in Thunderbird 6.0?

Thunderbird 6.0 offers no major updates but does fix several issues and makes the e-mail client more Windows 7-friendly. It was released on the evening of August 17th, 2011 less than two months after 5.0 went live. Mozilla has begun to make an effort to match Google’s plan of rapid releases for its Chrome browser. Thus, Thunderbird 6.0 was released the same day Mozilla updated Firefox to version 6.0, too.

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Changes in Thunderbird 6.0:

  • Updated to Mozilla’s Gecko 6 layout engine
  • Theme integration was improved
  • Windows 7 jumplists now work for Thunderbird
  • Fixes implemented to make importing Outlook e-mails easier
  • Fixes applied to the user interface and minor bugs
  • Improvements in speed, stability and security

The only new feature is how Thunderbird works for Windows 7 jumplists now. You simply right-click on the Thunderbird icon in your taskbar to get its jumplist to pop up. From there, you can do a variety of things whether Thunderbird is open or not.  If you are not sure how jumplists work, check out our guide on this nifty Windows 7 feature.

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Is Thunderbird worth the switch?

I have been a devoted Thunderbird user for over three years now. I absolutely love the functionality and the ease that comes with it.

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I managed a variety of e-mail accounts from it and have rarely had any issues. Themes and extensions make it my own and Thunderbird can change the way you use e-mail. If you have not given it a try and manage multiple e-mail addresses, you lose out on nothing by downloading it from Mozilla today.

Worst case scenario is that you end up uninstalling it and going back to the way you used to manage e-mails. Mozilla Thunderbird can give you the solution you are looking for and all you have to do is download it and give it a try.

Read more about the latest version of Thunderbird at Mozilla’s web site.