For some time I have been wanting to switch from Outlook to Thunderbird. Thunderbird is a mail client developed by Mozilla – the same organization that is behind the Firefox Browser. These are both open source tools and I am slowly migrating to open-source applications – the reasons deserve a whole separate post. They both have a rich offering of plugins and addons that extend their functionality. A popular Thunderbird addon is Lightning – which provides calendar functionality. Thunderbird & Lightning together are a formidable substitute to Outlook.
What has prevented me from making the transition until now was synchronizing my Nokia E65. The Nokia software provides a solution for Outlook. I could not find a solution for doing this with Thunderbird. Now I have. I found a nicely written post on how do this here (techies you might want to visit this wikipedia page on SyncML). The solution is founded on a free mediating service that you can use to sync both your mobile phone and Thunderbird. The one I found that has both phone and Thunderbird compatibility for both contacts and calendar entries is ScheduleWorld.
Now that I have this sorted out – I have encountered another obstacle. I have grown somewhat accustomed to some of the search features provided by Xobni (which I have installed on Outlook). Xobni compensates for Outlook’s meek search features (amongst other things). I will miss these features in Thunderbird – so again the migration is on hold – but I believe it is a matter of time!
This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.
Migrating to Mozilla Thunderbird
For some time I have been wanting to switch from Outlook to Thunderbird. Thunderbird is a mail client developed by Mozilla – the same organization that is behind the Firefox Browser. These are both open source tools and I am slowly migrating to open-source applications – the reasons deserve a whole separate post. They both have a rich offering of plugins and addons that extend their functionality. A popular Thunderbird addon is Lightning – which provides calendar functionality. Thunderbird & Lightning together are a formidable substitute to Outlook.
What has prevented me from making the transition until now was synchronizing my Nokia E65. The Nokia software provides a solution for Outlook. I could not find a solution for doing this with Thunderbird. Now I have. I found a nicely written post on how do this here (techies you might want to visit this wikipedia page on SyncML). The solution is founded on a free mediating service that you can use to sync both your mobile phone and Thunderbird. The one I found that has both phone and Thunderbird compatibility for both contacts and calendar entries is ScheduleWorld.
Now that I have this sorted out – I have encountered another obstacle. I have grown somewhat accustomed to some of the search features provided by Xobni (which I have installed on Outlook). Xobni compensates for Outlook’s meek search features (amongst other things). I will miss these features in Thunderbird – so again the migration is on hold – but I believe it is a matter of time!