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Ultimate Downloads For Your Computer 12

by Tom Samiljan on September 3, 2008 at 12:00 AM



Thunderbird 2 (Mac, Windows XP and Vista)


Most Windows users settle for the clunky Outlook Express or Windows Mail that usually comes with their new PCs -- many folks even shell out the bucks for the full version of this e-mail program that comes with the 'Microsoft Office' suite of apps. But just try looking for an old e-mail and you could well be stuck waiting five minutes or more for proper search results to come up. Enter Mozilla Thunderbird 2, which does for e-mail programs what Mozilla's Firefox did for Web browsers.

Thunderbird will collect mail from all your POP or IMAP accounts (such as those from AOL, Gmail, MobileMe, Yahoo!, Switched, and others) and store it in your in-box for you to respond, file, or delete later -- even if you're offline. Nothing really new on that front when compared with Windows Mail and its ilk, but what's really cool about Thunderbird is its ability to be customized.

As with Firefox, Thunderbird offers users all sorts of extensions that lets them add everything from a thesaurus and maps to custom keystrokes for filing away specific types of messages into specific folders. In addition, it lets you tag your messages with whatever esoteric keywords you need to organize your mail in ways besides standard folders (handy when you have e-mails that would belong in several different folders).

Best of all, Thunderbird's search is fast and accurate (and even lets you save old searches if you tend to search for the same type of mails over and over).

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