Re: [Evolution] Moving to Evo from Thunderbird?

["Michael M. Moore" <michael writemoore net>]

On Tue, 2007-11-06 at 07:20 -0600, Bob Root wrote:
> Is there any further information about moving from Thunderbird To 
> Evolution; Pros and Cons etc. I really like the look and feel of 
> Evolution; have used Thunderbird for years prior to shedding Windows op 
> systems.


Funny, I used Tbird for years (first on Windows, then on several Linux
OS'es and OS X) before switching to Evolution last year.  Recently I had
occasion to return to Tbird for about a week, when in a fit of pique
unrelated to Evo I decided to rip most of GNOME out of my system.  I was
hard-pressed to remember why I had liked Tbird so much for so long.  I
don't mean to sound as if I'm dumping on it because I'm sure a large
part of my discomfort was just having to readjust to its quirks after
having become used to Evo's quirks.  But I guess I expected to feel like
I was returning to an old friend, and instead I found myself thinking
"that's irritating" much more often than I'd expected.

For me the principle advantage of Evo is the way it integrates into
GNOME.  Tbird feels alien outside of Windows (it feels especially alien
on OS X), especially when you like to do most things from the keyboard
as I do.  If you're not a GNOME user, though, it doesn't make as much a
difference, I guess.  I'm Microsoft-free, so all the Exchange stuff
isn't an issue for me either way; if anything, it's a little frustrating
to see how much of Novell's Evo effort goes to making Evo work with
Exchange.

I wonder about the future of Tbird.  It seems to be in an uncertain
state within the Mozilla Foundation, and one of its main developers just
quit.  In the beginning it seemed like Firefox and Thunderbird were
accorded near-equal priority, but at some point Mozilla started putting
way more of its eggs in the Firefox basket and the bird is suffering
some neglect -- not so much that it isn't still a viable project or
valuable app, but neglect nonetheless.

Anyway, I'm back with Evo, which I guess speaks volumes.


-- 
Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions
of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to
dream." --S. Jackson