Thunderbird

Ever since I entered the working world, Outlook has been the email client of choice at my various employers.  I am used to it and the way it functions.  I use the calendar and if I feel really ambitious I sometimes even break out the task list.  But lately it’s been running slow as shit.  This is probably due to the fact that my computer at work is 3rd hand and likely has less RAM than my cellphone.  Or maybe it’s the fact that I have thousands of archived emails that I need to be able to search.  Either way, it takes forever to load.  Switching into it from another program sometimes locks my computer for a good 30 seconds or so.

This is more than just a productivity dilemma.  You see, I spend a good portion of my work day goofing off on the internet.  I spend a lot of time on reddit.com and the like.  I can not effectively alt+tab when I hear my boss’ footsteps coming if I can’t count on what I’m alt+tabbing into to load quickly. I need those rage comics and assorted memes off of my screen and I them off now.

So I decided to find another solution.  In comes Mozilla’s Thunderbird.  It functions much the same as Outlook. You do have to download a plugin to get calendar and task list functionality, but it’s really not difficult to do.  You can also download themes to change the programs looks.  But the biggest improvement for me is the speed.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still sluggish in my work system.  But apparently it stores files differently than Outlook.  So far, it’s probably cut my loading and window switching times in half.  The interface is much cleaner as well.

In fact, it works so well that I’ve decided to use it with my personal email at home.  Unlike Outlook, Thunderbird is open source and free to use.  So if you want a good email/calendar/rss/task list app, and you don’t want to pay for it, Thunderbird is what you are looking for.  I have it synced with my personal GMail account, and I’ve even created a new email account specifically for this site: mike[at]theworldisawake.com.  It appears to be working flawlessly.

With the addition of another plugin, I’ve synced my Google Calendars with Thunderbird as well.  While I was at it, I even got my wife to create a calendar that we can both edit.  She immediately wrote in our next WoW raids, so now whenever I look at my phone, I can see which nights have already been planned for me.

Hopefully I’ll be able to incorporate it with the Getting Things Done system.  I just started reading the book last night and so far it seems promising.  I’ve having near meltdowns at work trying to manage my growing list of responsibilities.  But that’s another post.