I’ve been using Mozilla Thunderbird for two years, and I was (and I still am) very comfortable with it. Especially I like very much how it manages multiple pop accounts, the themes and mainly its speed.

But now, for some reasons, I began (again) using Evolution. I need it because its great integration with the GNOME desktop, and because it has some features that I need, for example, tasks and appointments management.

Despite Evolution has a lot of features, I think that the mail client application has nothing to do with Mozilla Thunderbird. Some examples

  • Thurderbird differentiates between unread mails and new mails, with Evo is impossible to know if an unread message is old or new without comparing dates. Thunderbird notifies you with some graphical artifacts
  • My pop accounts have their own Inbox,Sent,Trash etc... in the Thunderbird. I can't do it with Evo (yes I know that I can use the virtual folders but it's just a workaround, for example the sent or trash folders will be still global)
  • When you have new messages in a thread, and the thread is contracted, Thunderbird shows you that you have this new messages by underlining the first message of the thread while Evo just shows you this first message as it was unread
  • The thread view of Thunderbird is really nice and very attractive to the eye, it's not as easy to identify threads in Evo
  • The UI of Evo is too complex just for sending emails, maybe some UI work is needed
  • And finally Thunderbird is really fast, I know that Evo is more than a mail client but the difference between these two ones is too big
I'm some other points that I don't currently remember. I don't want to say that Thunderbird is better than Evo, this comparison is neither an usability report nor a serious study I'm just, talking about some stuff that I miss in Evo. Evo has some other amazing features, for example, I did today a copy&paste from a wiki page with tables to a new blank mail with an unbelievable level of accuracy, I was really very impressed.

The first half is over, the second half must be played, who’ll win?. Ladies and Gentlemen place your bets :).