I recently switched over to Thunderbird on my iMac G5 at work and I’ve been loving it ever since. I’m not finding to many missing features and there are many more features that I probably haven’t even found.

Some of my favorite features include…
• Saved Searches (smart folders)
• Send Message Again as New
• Labels
• Check spelling before I send
• QuickNote Extension
• Smilie Inserter Extension
• Contacts Sidebar Extension
• Themes (even though I love the default)
• Great Keyboard Shortcuts
• Next – Previous Message Buttons (edited)
• HTML Formatting Bar
• Little Attachment Window. However, how can I open that without first browsing for a file? I’d rather it be open all the time so I can drag and drop.
• How the dock icon only shows new messages since I last had the application as the front most application. However, it gets confused every now and then with new messages and such.

Missing, broken or just not figured out…
• Reply All button after you hit reply. (incase I forgot to hit reply all I’d like to still add the other address’ without starting over.
• Custom mail notifications sounds. It’s broken.
• Multiple Signatures. I think I need to find an extension.
• Threading bothers me in Thunderbird, but not in Apple’s Mail.app
• Inline spell check (coming in 1.1)
• Search box bugs me as I can’t just click and edit it’s content. It highlights everything.
• Ability to right click on dock icon to create a new message.
• Ability to drag a file to the dock icon to open a new message with the file attached.
• Folders need to be clicked on to be refreshed. Example, a new message comes into the inbox and is also in a smart folder. Well if I read it in the inbox, the smart folder doesn’t know that until I click on it.

All in all I give Thunderbird an A-. It is only the first release for this email client and it’s an amazing start. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Update: Thunderbird needs spell check for the Subject line too. Forgot that one.