Fun with Email

So I bit the bullet about an hour ago, and started installing Mozilla Thunderbird as my new email program, replacing my old (version 4.2) much-loved, although often frustrating, Eudora. I didn't have a choice. Prodigy, now owned by/called AT&T Yahoo, is my ISP, and they're requiring email clients to have SSL capabilities. My old Eudora can't do that, and the new Eudora is going to be based on Thunderbird anyway, when it's finished. So, since I've been happy with Firefox for at least a year now, I'm switching to TBird.

So far? Lots of hassle getting the accounts set up, mostly because I've got five email accounts, and even though there are only two domains to deal with (prodigy and my webspace provider), it's always a pain figuring out the little details. Even with Eudora open and copying the info directly over, it's a pain. Plus, I think I'm still having problems with the SMTP server at Prodigy. That was the subject of about six weeks of pain in the #$$ hassle when SBC Yahoo bought Prodigy. It took many, many emails to the Customer Service robot, and eventually a live-chat with someone at Yahoo, to get it fixed. The "official" paperwork had two different sets of SMTP/POP info, and neither one worked. The live chat helper gave me two more sets of info, and finally one worked. Never got an explanation for why, but apparently I'm using some SMTP server that's not mentioned in the help files. Huh.

It looks a lot like Outlook (not a plus, in my book). And it seems to be slow at downloading email. That could be a problem, since I somehow get a lot of email. Seriously - we go out of town for the weekend, and I can have 500 messages waiting for me. Most of those are fluff, I belong to a few hobby Yahoo-lists that are mostly listing things for sale, and they generate a lot of traffic. Ditto for the Freecycle list and a few others.

On the up side, it's downloaded a few emails that for some reason Eudora wouldn't download. I could see them in the webmail interface, but even after a year, they were still sitting on the server instead of my hard drive. Bizarre, no?

Something I don't like: The status bar shows the number of emails to download, but only for one account at a time (I think). Eudora will show the status for all five accounts at once, which is what I'm used to. I can't think of a serious need to know that, but I like being able to see it.

Getting my email filters set up again will be a tremendous pain, since TBird apparently can't import settings from Eudora without crashing, and I have sooo many filters it's not funny. And of course Eudora doesn't seem to have a way to print them out. Sigh.

On the other hand, if the Junk filter works, I'll be soooo happy.