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Todoist+Thunderbird
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Posted by MadaboutDana
May 6, 2013 at 11:59 AM
My working life has just been thrown into turmoil!
Having settled happily on eM Client as my Outlook equivalent (I loathe Outlook), albeit after flirting briefly with the latest EssentialPIM and its rather good - but also rather slow - mail client, I’ve just discovered the Todoist extension for Mozilla Thunderbird.
What a neat piece of software! You can drag e-mails out of Thunderbird’s inbox(es) and drop them into the Todoist window, whereupon they automatically become tasks. Very simple, but also very efficient. Said tasks are then synchronised across all one’s Todoist clients (mobile as well).
As people may remember, Todoist is one of the better outliner-style task managers around. I’m still waiting for their iPad-optimised client, but I know they’re working away on it.
So now I have to decide whether I chuck in eM Client and go back to Thunderbird (which has also been streamlined since the last time I looked at it). Rats!
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
May 7, 2013 at 02:01 PM
Turning emails into tasks is a feature I very much appreciate in many cloud-based task managers, which can d this from with Google (Apps) Mail. Having it on a desktop mail application seems wonderful.
However, I am not ready to go back to Thunderbird with which I’ve had a love-hate relationship in the past, especially after this http://www.zdnet.com/mozilla-scraps-thunderbird-development-email-client-not-a-priority-anymore-7000000469/
By the way, I’ve also settled with EM Client as my, well, email client of choice in Windows.
Posted by Ken
May 7, 2013 at 03:29 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>By the way, I’ve also settled with EM Client as my, well, email client
>of choice in Windows.
Alexander,
Can you say more about EM Client? Is it stable and reliable? I may be looking for an alternative client to Outlook, and EM Client is one that I would like to consider, but some have reported that while they like the program, the current version is a bit buggy. Any input would be greatly appreciated, as would any alternate candidates for consideration.
Thanks,
—Ken
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
May 7, 2013 at 08:53 PM
I’ve been using EM Client for a few months, and only as a complementary solution for working with Google Apps Mail when offline. I first read about it in Bits du Jour and chose to ignore it; I’ve seen many hopeful email clients from little known companies become abandonware and it’s not very funny when you have a lot of material locked in them (as I do in Calypso/Courier from ages back). Then I read that it was taken under the wing of Softmaker Office which I like and own a license to, and decided to try it out.
Some background: I turned to EM Client rather reluctantly and only after having been disappointed by several other IMAP capable clients: in Thunderbird I have lost messages and Postbox simply crawled and froze when trying to handle my mailbox (40% of a 25 Gb mailbox is no laughing matter)*. I would have liked a cross-platform solution (I often work on a Linux notebook) but, again, found none I felt satisfied with. As for Outlook, I’ve never managed to like it, and I know from reviews and colleagues’ experience that it doesn’t work well with Google Mail, so I never really considered it an option. Prior to Thunderbird and Postbox which didn’t last long with me, and before switching to Google Apps for our company mail, I used The Bat! for several years. Admittedly Google has done a good job of creating a web mail application whose strengths are difficult to reproduce in desktop clients—at least I have found none that satisfies me in this respect.
In this context, EM Client has—until now—proved OK. It’s fast; after the initial sync which might have taken a couple of days more, morning syncs happen very quickly. It’s rather smart: it will start by syncing the most recent messages in the inbox and then move on to other folders. It does automatic backups even if it isn’t running. It works well with various character sets. There may well be bugs, but I haven’t seen them yet. If I used it more often I might have seen them. It took me quite a while to find Thunderbird’s bugs and when I did I wasn’t happy.
Not sure if my experience helps. Once again, there’s few replacements for trying something one’s self. By the way, have you tried Daisho? http://www.daisho-blacksmith.com/en/software.html It’s also a German product and seemed to me quite well designed; unfortunately I found its IMAP capabilities rather limited.
*Yes, I know it’s a lot of mail. Part of the reason for wanting a desktop client is to clean up messages with huge attachments. Unbelievably, Google Mail cannot sort messages by size; the only way I have found is to sync the full mailbox in and offline reader and then use its own filters / sorting fields.
Posted by Ken
May 8, 2013 at 05:07 AM
Very helpful information, Alexander. Thank you for taking the time to write a thoughtful reply. It is much appreciated.
—Ken