Okay, so it’s been a while since my last post. But it seems like everything is beginning to fall into place.
Please bear with me for a few more months while I upload all of my old content and work on the layout of this site.
In the meantime, I should probably mention how AWESOME Mozilla Thunderbird is for me at the moment. For those who don’t know what Thunderbird is, I guess a brief explanation is due:
In a nutshell, Thunderbird does what Microsoft Outlook does: collect your email and display it in a user interface that some people may find easier to deal with. But Thunderbird is different, because the possibilities for extending it are limited only by your own programming/download ability. There are hundreds of free add-ons available online, much like with Firefox. All of these are designed to tailor to specific needs. And I have very high needs.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Gmail and I love the Gmail interface. My main reason for switching over was that I was finding it extremely difficult to separate my three lives (personal, work and creative) email-wise without making three separate email accounts. While this may have worked in itself somewhat, signing in and out of three different accounts every day looked like it was going to be just as effective as doing nothing at all.
Apparently, Thunderbird can retrieve mail from multiple accounts at the same time, and the mail is stored in separate folders. So, if one day I feel like I want to concentrate on work for a while I can ignore the other two accounts and focus on my work account. Even so, I can keep an eye on how many emails the other accounts are getting, which is great for someone paranoid like me.
My other problem was that my work account was previously used both for work and my personal life, so I had two years’ worth of backlogged emails from Facebook, friends and the like in the archives. In order to completely separate my three lives, I wanted to put all of the old emails that were unrelated to work into my new personal account, but I didn’t want to have to forward each email individually.
So, what could I do? Apparently it’s as simple as dragging the emails from one account into the other. I’ve double-checked with the actual Gmail interface, and it’s true: the email looks as though it may as well have been sent straight to my personal account in the first place. I have no idea how this is achieved, but it’s pretty awesome, whatever happens.
The switch from Gmail was so easy, as well. The latest version of Thunderbird practically favours Gmail for integration of email accounts, and this add-on makes it easy to sync your Google calendar with that of Thunderbird.
I’ve been shouting the utter convenience of Thunderbird to the rafters these past few days and I thought it should culminate in a post here, in case anyone else is in the same predicament I was in. Most of my tech-savvy friends are laughing at me right now (the simple matter of Gmail’s infinite superiority in every way) but I guess I’ll see how this little adventure goes!