Thunderbird 3.0 Released

[TCH-Thomas]

Thunderbird 3.0 has been released.

 

Read more / Get it at: mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird

 

Please note that installing Thunderbird 3 may overwrite your existing installation of Thunderbird on Linux.

Windows and Mac OS X will install to different locations, however it is recommended that you check the messages during installation.

For all systems, you won't lose any of your messages or address books, but some of your extensions and other add-ons might not work until updates for them are made available.

Users are highly encouraged to install Thunderbird 3 in another folder (on Windows, this is done using Custom Install) and backup their profiles before testing Thunderbird 3.

[TCH-Bruce]

Thanks Thomas. Users should read the installation notes first!

[Jeren]

I installed Thunderbird 3 fine yesterday. It definitely looks better than 2.

 

Unfortunately, it is also much slower! It takes roughly 15 seconds (typically longer) to open a single email (which I have to do before I can even hit the 'delete' button). I have no idea what is causing this, and Googling for an answer doesn't give me any results.

 

It definitely annoys me. :\ It's now faster to check mail on my iPhone...

[OJB]

I installed it today at work and home. I love it. Looks much cleaner and I have experienced exactly the opposite of what Jeren has. Everything seems to be much quicker, except when it was re-synchronising my IMAP folders the first time. That took like 5 hours at work to sync my IMAP account with 24,000+ emails... Thunderbird was very unstable during this and took 5 seconds for a single character I typed in an email to come up but once the initial IMAP sync was done and the message indexing had completed all was dandy and seemed more responsive than 2. On a side note, the Silvermel theme is gorgeous in my opinion!

Edited December 9, 2009 by OJB

[TCH-Bruce]

I too installed it at work and home and like the look. Haven't experienced the slowness issues either. I POP my mail though. I think I'm too dumb to use smart folders though. I still prefer the "All folders" view.

[carbonize]

I'm holding off updating until all the add ons I use have been updated such as Lightning (nightly does work with TB3), Google Calendar Provider, Contacts Sidebar and Virtual Identity.

 

@OJB - You really need all 24,000+ emails? I think you need to do some serious housekeeping.

[TCH-Bruce]

I was using 3 add-ons. Only one of them hasn't been updated and I can live without it. In fact I was ready to remove it before upgrading. It was a smiley insert add-on.

[Jeren]

Man, I feel so left out of the party. I've reindexed my mail, tried compacting my folders... Still takes 11 seconds between the time I click on an email and for it to come up in the preview area. This is even true for pure text emails.

 

Sad part is, Googling for posts or pages regarding slow Thunderbird 3 either gives no results or shows errors early in beta that were fixed. I have yet to find someone that has my issue.

 

This is SO very annoying. It's now faster for me to check my email from my iPhone at my desk than it is for me to do so on my PC.

[carbonize]

Did you do a clean install of 3 or just installed it over 2?

[Jeren]

I installed it into a separate folder and did a data import.