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Re: [LUG] Thunderbird for spam control

 

On 01/07/10 19:27, Julian Hall wrote:
On 01/07/2010 17:54, Neil Winchurst wrote:
My wife has her own laptop and insists on using XP because that was on
the machine when she bought it. Oh well, what can I do?

She gets a lot of spam mail, of course, and I want to get it sorted for
her. However I just cannot get on with Outlook Express ( what a terrible
program).

I know that Thunderbird is available for Windows, and I am used to that
program. I would like to suggest installing the Windows version of TB
for her and then helping with the spam.

Is this a good idea? Is it easy to download and install on XP. I haven't
used Windows for years, so I am a bit worried about messing things up.
Would any particular version be best?

Any help appreciated thanks,

Neil

TB works fine on Windows, although I've only used in on XP and 7.
Current version is 3.0.5 and I would suggest getting the Lightning addon
as well (Calendar) so you basically end up with an open source
equivalent to the full Outlook that works better and faster than the
baby brother Outlook Express.


Actually 3.1 has been out about a week*, it's supposed to have some improvements over 3.0.x.

http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/all.html

* Okay, some languages are still limited to 3.0.5 but the English version is 3.1

As for spam control, I don't have any issues with it - I do like the
ability to use a white list - basically filter any mail from people not
in your address book either; to a blacklist folder as I do - safer but
it's still downloaded; or deleted from server - could delete mail from
friends who change addresses or badly behaved mailing programs that
never use the same From: address.


I agree, I occasionally get spam and it's usually picked up as spam, although sometimes a couple of innocent messages are picked up but luckily not deleted.

One key decision to make when you install is if you want all mail to go
to a global Inbox or to separate ones for each account. Either way you
can still set-up filters for each account or global.


I prefer individual in-boxes myself, but that's what I got used to with Thunderbird 2.x. I guess that might not be an issue with only one mail account though.

Thunderbird 3.x is also now smart enough to detect mail server settings for a lot of ISPs etc. It's not fool proof, but it covers a lot of ISPs.

Rob

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