Is it just me or is Thunderbird not a particularly polished product? It's been around for years and by now one would think it would be so 5 star cutting edge that no othe… (cytajśo wěcej)
Is it just me or is Thunderbird not a particularly polished product? It's been around for years and by now one would think it would be so 5 star cutting edge that no other client could possibly touch it. In my experience, not so.
I had TBird many years ago and then became an early adopter of cloud based email. I used the provider's interface. I now use three email providers and thought that going back to TBird would help me concatonate all of my accounts in one easy interface. While it has done that, why has it taken so long to configure?
i'm an expert user. I always configure my accounts manually with non-default ports, etc,... I know what I'm doing. It took me a few hours to figure out how to configure them all in TBird AND make them work. I should have been able to have all accounts setup and operational in 15 minutes or less. What I'm finding is that TBird functionality is not very intuitive. I've even had to resort to doing online searches to find out how to do things. That does not speak well for what should be a very mature product. It's not as if Mozilla does not have resources to develop a professional product. It seems that they let the product be developed and then forget about quality control and gaining user feedback with focus groups. if they did this, TBird would be known as very mature AND POLISHED!
Another area I'm having nothing but issues is the calendar. Like email it should be an easy process to connect Tbird's (app) calendar with an external calendar and have it operate two way. I've been trying to connect my TBird calendar with Apple calendar so that I can have a reliable calendar on my iPhone. I wouldn't have to do this if there was a TBird iOS calendar app. The fact is that two weeks later and I'm still putzing around with it trying to make them talk to each other. The online help is virtually useless. There is a lot of old information. How do I know this? The instructions say to look for something and then that something is not in the current version of TBird. Then I have to go at it solo and try to figure it out.
Also, I find the TBird interface a little dated but more important not at all intuitive. Trying to do simple things like compose a new message takes time to figure out. Yes, I finally found the "Ctrl N" command, however, I am now so accustomed to graphics interfaces that I resist going back to Ctrl keyboard commands. I'm not new at this game, I've been around PC's since the original IBM PC that ran IBM-DOS so command lines and keyboard commands are nothing new to me. I simply don't want to use them any more. TBird forces me to do that. It's as if the developers are all stuck in the 80's-90's and don't really want to take this product into the 21st Century.
Don't get me wrong, it's a very good product from the back end, however, I have distaste for anything that forces me to change my workflow and that is what has happened. I don't mind making some changes, however, going back to TBird makes me feel as if I'm starting all over learning about email and calendars. I'm a professional. At one time I enjoyed hacking and making things work the way I wanted. Those days are gone and now I need tools that work out of the box as I value my time.
Tbird needs is a LOT OF SPIT AND POLISH for it to be regarded as a product that can be used easily by professionals, neopites and everyone in between. At this time, it doesn't hit that mark.
