Is Firefox & Thunderbird better than IE & Outlook?

[Guest JanusChrist]

@JanusChrist

u seem like a very angry person lol

Not angry, just telling it like it is.

BTW, check out Wikipedia for a complete and unbiased article on Firefox.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox

[Guest JanusChrist]

Im Hardcore Firefox, but new to Thunderbird.

Is there a legal reason we cannot get Hotmail in Thunderbird, or a technical reason? 

I wonder if someone can make a 'hotmail popper' extension.

Otherwise the hotmail webmail has gotten better at least.

You can't get Hotmail in Outlook either, M$ wants you to pay them 20 bucks a year to "upgrade" your email account to allow the use of email clients with Hotmail.

If you already paid for the "upgrade", I wouldn't be suprised about Thunderbird. M$ has been making their OSes incompatable with competing products since the days of MSDOS (Netscape and Java for examples).

Go to www.mozilla.com for a Hot Popper.

[Nanaki]

The road I took to get to Firefox was long. I never had a real problem with MSIE (next to the freezes when typing an incorrect URL - which was actually a pain in the ***). But, NAV2k2 corrupted it some years ago. At that time I had been using Netscape now and then, just for the heck of it, so that became my primary browser. Later I switched to Seamonkey, because of the smaller update-cycle. I love Seamonkey, it rules. Around the time Firefox/Firebird 0.7 I switched to it -because I had broken my Seamonkey.

Several weeks ago I formatted my computer, and after the Windows reinstall, I decided to default Firefox completly, for all five accounts of my computer -from the family. I don't regret that decision. I had zero viruses since then. My family often opens ActiveX stuff and others, and now I don't have to worry about it anymore. Off couse, I could just limit their Windows accounts rights, but I don't have the time to maintain that.

That's just a lil' story. Is Firefox better then MSIE? Yes. It's (for now) safer and I'm guessing it will stay that way for a long while. I love the Gecko rendering, it does its job perfectly. I love tabbed browsing, and all the goody extensions you find on the internet. But, is MSIE unmissable? No. Although the use of MSIE is currently limited to once in four months, it's still needed for some sites. Windows Update is now done by Automatic Updates, so I'm guessing MSIE will become obsolete over some time. Not for corporates, but for home users. Though, I don't get why people won't use the Mozilla ActiveX control. It's used when it's needed, unlike MSIE's control.

Is Thunderbird better than Outlook? Nah. Outlook Express did it's job fine, I just wanted something new. I like the built-in RSS tho.

[XtremeMaC]

very very nice comments on this topic

well here's mine:

i'm using opera & outlook 2003. I don't like outlook express bc its express as the name says and doesn't have much use for me, outlook handles everything nicer, like rules, junk mail filter, etc..

i do like MS products mostly bc they're done by a big company, which means they look at every aspect, they cover all the areas and since they've been playing with outlook for years they know what to do what not to do etc. I never ever had a problem with outlook, i also use external plugins..

about opera:

• not dull looking,
  
• have nice tabs,
  
• u can open extra windows as well,
  
• i usually open 10+ tabs and move from 1 to the other, and I use ctrl+shift+click in order to bring out a link on the background page which is important bc while i read a page i can click on the link and while i'm continuing to read it the page loads at the background.
  
• say u open 10 windows with firefox and IE and they suddenly decide to give u an error and close, oh my u've lost all the pages u were visiting, u didn't bookmark them oh mighty lord , well opera saves them so next time u open opera u've the ability to revert back to the last pages u visited.
  
• file transfer: with IE and i'm not sure about firefox, when u dl a file the file sits on the screen unless u click on minimize right? well with opera u can set it to hide the dl screen automatically and get a notification when the dl is complete.
  
• has RSS feed capacity, so u can get news from msfn & other pages.
  
• ow it has real cache so say u're going to visit a page with lots of pictures right? u don't want them to load again opera is your friend, also say if u visit a page and on that page there are 50 pictures u've already seen and now they added 50 more but u don't want to see those, well opera can open that page and only load those pictures that are in cache, or u can set it to not show any images, that i often use.
  
• with IE, when u have timeout's u cannot go back to the page u were just a sec ago, with opera u can
  
• with IE, say u're typing in a text area just like this, u typed typed, typed and u clicked on add reply and oops crap error, connection error, any error, it didn't get submitted, ow all those stuff u wrote is now gone, but not with opera, u can go back.
  
• etc. etc. I just love opera,
  
• most ppl use firefox bc its "hmm displays fast" yea cool feature, that feature has stolen most my friends' minds, they don't understand why i use opera, they won't ever understand bc they're lazy but still, firefox for zuckers (joking!!!)
  
• u can use opera in your symbian os's which is your mobile phones.
  
• prathapml did I miss any cool feature
  

[buletov]

firefox for me

call me a fan boy but it much easier browsing,

(except on some sites that doesn't care about web

standards...but then again, i don't care about those)

[XtremeMaC]

what? what the heck's easy browsing?

[Innocent Devil]

firefox any doubt i were used IE previously. sometimes it caused to install some malware automatically & crashing .. Also it doesnt have tabbed browsing & can't add extensions or themes like firefox.

firefox is simple &cute

IE became much better with XP SP2 even then it will not reach upto firefox's comfort of browsing

[m8E]

After having some troubles and other very annoying computer/internet type bother my hard drive has now been freshly formatted and I've started everything over again, now Firefox works no problem and I'm typing this post using the Firefox browser for the first time. As yet I've not enough experience with Firefox to know just how good it is but so far it seems easy and quick to use. Opera I have downloaded but not yet installed or used, I will see how Firefox gets on for now and maybe introduce Opera a bit later on.

I have also downloaded and installed Thunderbird, however in the process of trying to set up an email account with Thunderbird it asks me for my email address, but isn't Thunderbird the email? Doesn't Thunderbird give you the email facility and address? I've not completed the Thunderbird setup yet and am still using OE at the moment, at least I'm trying to use OE at the moment but it doesn't seem to want to send or receive and comes up with the error message:

Unable to logon to the server using Secure Password Authentication. Account: 'pop.wanadoo.co.uk', Server: 'pop.wanadoo.co.uk', Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR unknown command', Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 0x800CCC90, Error Number: 0x800CCC18

so I am email-less at the moment, any ideas what the above error here with OE is?

But now back to Thunderbird, in the setup process I'm also asked for my incoming server and my outgoing server but wouldn't these be the same? This is all quite frustrating for someone who has never done any of this sort of thing before!

[Nanaki]

Incoming is pop, outgoing smtp.

Check your ISP's site (Wanadoo I presume? ) how to configure.

edit: your settings:

incoming: pop.wanadoo.co.uk

outgoing: smtp.wanadoo.co.uk

Account name: yourname@wanadoo.co.uk

Password: err, duh

Don't select 'use SSL'.

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

I'm using FF & TB for several months now. Never looking back...

why?

-faster

-works more intuitively

-no more security issues

-extensions & themes

-and so many more...

[matrix0978]

ewww yeah IE i hate... which im using now im my mom computer..... But my other computer when its not broken i use Opera... I was usiing Firefox and i heard about Opera so i tried it and i love it. The only thing i dont like about it is the Ad in the top right hand corner but thats not a big deal!

[XtremeMaC]

i don't understand when ppl say its more secure, no more security issues.

when was the last time u experienced a security problem with IE?

yea i don't like ie bc of its not very functional, but aside from that i think 99% of the ppl who use internet over ie cannot really say one is more secure than the other, ppl just think ie is not secure bc MS keeps releasing ways to improve it and ways to even secure it more.

[Zxian]

i don't understand when ppl say its more secure, no more security issues.

when was the last time u experienced a security problem with IE?

yea i don't like ie bc of its not very functional, but aside from that i think 99% of the ppl who use internet over ie cannot really say one is more secure than the other, ppl just think ie is not secure bc MS keeps releasing ways to improve it and ways to even secure it more.

Very well put...

Since Firefox is still relatively smaller in terms of usage worldwide, we've still got some time before people will try to see if they can find flaws in it. When they do, we'll probably start seeing the same types of updates from the Mozilla group.

Oh.. and I like Opera better than both. Much cleaner interface with less bugs and wrinkles to sort out.

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

i don't understand when ppl say its more secure, no more security issues.

when was the last time u experienced a security problem with IE?

yea i don't like ie bc of its not very functional, but aside from that i think 99% of the ppl who use internet over ie cannot really say one is more secure than the other, ppl just think ie is not secure bc MS keeps releasing ways to improve it and ways to even secure it more.

I *DO* experience Firefox as more secure than Internet Explorer: no more dataminers or any other spyware on my pc....

I *DO* experience Thunderbird as more secure than Outlook Express: built-in junk mail filter, doesn't view images by default...

[matrix0978]

I agree with Bâshrat the Sneaky.