Brief Hands-On Report--Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5rc2 is Out

and available for download via MacUpdate.com. Thunderbird is the standalone open source email client from the Mozilla Project. Thunderbird 1.5 will have lots of new features and this is Release Candidate 2, meaning the final version will be out shortly. The companion Web browser, Firefox 1.5, has been out for awhile. Some of the new features are:

• Automated update to streamline product upgrades. Notification of an update is more prominent, and updates to Thunderbird may now be half a megabyte or smaller. Updating extensions has also improved.
  
• Sort address autocomplete results by how often you send e-mail to each recipient.
  Spell check as you type.
  
• Saved Search Folders can now search across multiple accounts.
  
• Built in phishing detector to help protect users against email scams.
  
• Podcasting and other RSS Improvements.
  
• Deleting attachments from messages.
  
• Integration with server side spam filtering.
  
• Reply and forward actions for message filters.
  
• Kerberos Authentication.
  
• Auto save as draft for mail composition.
  
• Message aging.
  
• Filters for Global Inbox.
  
• Improvements to product usability including redesigned options interface, and SMTP server management.
  
• Many security enhancements.

We use Thunderbird as our backup to Apple Mail so we downloaded and installed a copy. The interface is very nice, similar to Apple Mail's interface. We used it to send several test messages, save as draft, attach files, etc. It worked perfectly. [Bill Fox]