OT- Thunderbird ugliness, Was: Eudora email client source code released

[Jon Elson]

On 05/23/2018 09:28 AM, JP Hindin via cctalk wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 22 May 2018, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
>> so I use Thunderbird on a Linux platform. It is awfully 
>> slow. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes to download 3 messages 
>> when I start it up.
>>
>> At home I use Thunderbird with standard Linux smtp and 
>> pop servers and it works fine.
>
> Apologies to hijack this one (I can't tell you how 
> impressed I am with both the CHM's efforts and Qualcomm's 
> release, I find these things really exciting for our 
> hobby) - but I've been having real troubles with TBird in 
> the last few years and my obstinacy has been holding me back.
>
> I run Thunderbird on a 2016 MacBoook Pro (Sierra 10.12.6, 
> 2.6GHz i7, 16GB RAM, internal SSD) where I'm pulling via 
> IMAP from Google (their professional company service 
> thingy), but maintain a local 24GB cache of eMail.
>
> It's slower than molasses in january. Moving eMail around 
> between 'folders' often has it sit and spin the beachball 
> for 2-3 seconds - dozens of times a day. And I just can't 
> work out why - I mean, yes, it's a lot of ruddy eMail, but 
> it's a monster of a laptop and it should be pulling/moving 
> on the SSD when it's getting stuck before it's even tried 
> to send the move message to google.
>
> I _detest_ the gmail interface, I'd really prefer to 
> continue using a client like this - but TBird just isn't 
> getting any better.
>
> What am I missing here? Are there better options? Is 
> Thunderbird just not designed for large mail sets for 
> people who actually work for a living?
>
You should keep the Inbox down to a few hundred messages at 
the most.  I create a bunch of Inbox_2017 type folders and 
move older Inbox items to it every couple months.  All 
sorting is done in memory, and if any folder gets too big, 
it starts to thrash.  I do the same for Sent and Local folders.
Also, make sure you clear out your Junk and Trash folders 
every couple weeks.  There is an "extension" called "Extra 
Folder Columns" that adds total messages and a megabytes 
column to each folder, so you can see when it needs clearing 
out.  Not sure if this is available for your version, but I 
find it very useful.
I keep all (retained) email locally, I don't trust any 
outside service.  So, I can see old messages even without 
the net.  I have mail going back to 1997.

I DO have an SSD, that really helps.  The only thing I find 
slow is when I go to delete 4000+ emails from the Trash 
folder.  That can take a minute, but I only do it every 
week, or less often.

When I open Thunderbird and download 300+ emails at a 
session, it takes about 15 seconds to run all the message 
filter rules on them. I think that is GREAT, let the 
computer do work so I don't HAVE to.
And, once the automatic filtering is trained, it works 
AMAZINGLY well at culling all the spam and almost NEVER puts 
a good message in the Trash or Junk folder.  That, right 
THERE is why I use Thunderbird!
I do have about a dozen hand-written filters for stuff that 
repeatedly gets through the automatic filtering.

As for the slowness at work with Office 365, that is clearly 
a Microsoft issue, everybody sees the same awful 
performance, no matter what interface they use to access it.

Jon