There were a lot of mixed feelings about Thunderbird 3.0, and certainly a wealth of glitches, bugs and core issues that needed to be resolved for an otherwise more than satisfactory alternative to other paid solutions such as MS Outlook. Thunderbird 3.1 however promises its users that the days of bugged usage are indeed over. Not only is the new version far more Gmail friendly (avoiding several annoying and time-consuming hang ups), but it also comes with a more powerful and superior search tool, as well as a new Quick Filter tool for filtering messages.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

As well as having as serious issue when it came to importing email from previous versions (effectively it didn’t, or at least when, then not in full), anyone used to syncing their Gmail account using Thunderbird 3.0 is akin to waiting – Thunderbird would answer to attempted “All Mail” syncing from Gmail with an extremely lethargic retort, sometimes holding up further use of the software for several hours. This is indeed a thing of the past with Thunderbird 3.1, the Arnold Schwarzenegger version to its Danny DeVito-esque little brother.

Users can look forward to a vast difference in speed. The 3.1 version of Thunderbird chomps through mail indexing in large mail boxes faster than ever before and excels in importing large volumes of mail from previous versions at a rate of knots (yes, we tested it) whilst still allowing the user to continue carrying out other tasks within the programme.

The search tool is also light years ahead of Thunderbird 3.0, utlising the faster index speed to pinpoint searches swiftly and, with selective search options comparative to those in Gmail, far more accurately.

New to Thunderbird 3.1

Thunderbird 3.1 not only patches up flaws from the 3.0 version, but also offers users a palette of new features. The new Quick Filter enables users to filter messages according to status: Unread, Starred, Contact, Tags, or Attachments. The feature can also be selected to maintain filters even when changing folders. The only lack that could be suggested for a future update would be a way of customising the filters in the Quick Filter tool, although extensions do allow the user to filter based on sender and date.

The new “saved files” manager aids the user is managing attachments. The striking resemblanceto Firefox’s Download Manager cannot be denied, but who cares as long as everything is in-house?! The manager displays all files downloaded from e-mail to the user’s PC, enabling users to retrieve files easier in the future.

Thunderbird 3.1 also offers users a new Account Setup Wizard. Although there is hardly any difference in its preentation, a host of ISP settings (hundreds) have been added, enabling Thunderbird to better guess your settings. On entering name, e-mail address and password, Thunderbird automatically configures the rest of the users setup according to what it can analyse as being the most-desired variant. This of course can be changed by the user at any time via the usual channels within Thunderbird.

Those of you interested in downloading a copy of the latest release candidate can get it directly from Mozilla, here.