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A while back I ditched the desktop e-mail client concept and decided to go strictly with web-based e-mail. Now that I have multiple GMail accounts, however, logging in and out of these accounts is a real pain in the neck. I have also been looking for a way to easily integrate my Google Calendar account with my e-mail, allowing easy access to messages, to-do list, and monthly events. Sound familiar? It’s called Microsoft Outlook. I don’t support Microsoft, so what if I wanted to have my cake and eat it for “free?” Enter Mozilla Thunderbird.

After several conversations with my good friend Kenny, I was convinced that I should take advantage of Google’s new IMAP service, combined with Mozilla’s stand-alone e-mail client, Thunderbird, to manage my multiple GMail accounts. I first tried the multiple account GMail/IMAP thing with Apple’s Mail, but I found that the synchronization between Mail and Google was painfully slow. I’m not sure why…perhaps I missed the setting that only downloads the message headers by default. After setting up the IMAP accounts in Thunderbird, I had to make sure each account was assigned the appropriate SMTP address, user name, and password to allow sent mail from each account to be put into the correct “Sent Mail” folder. I found Thunderbird’s IMAP support and synchronization to be quite good and speedy, offering many server/message features like only downloading message headers, restricting message size, and nice integration with Google’s GMail.

Now that I could easily manage my three GMail accounts, it was time to integrate Google Calendar into the mix. I hunted around for a way to integrate Sunbird, the open-source, Mozilla calendar program, with Thunderbird…birds of a feather. Sunbird is a stand-alone program, but because Thunderbird supports extensions, the wonderful folks on the Mozilla calendar project created Lightning, the calendar extension that can be installed into Thunderbird. Mozilla sure makes it hard to keep all these birds, suns, foxes, monkeys, seas, and weather references straight, don’t they? I think they should change their name from Mozilla to Mo-zoo-lla.

I eventually found what I was looking for; see “Stay in Sync with GCal and Thunderbird” for how to set up a synchronized Google Calendar, using the Thunderbird extensions Lightning, Google Provider, and Google’s built-in GCal Service. The instructions are pretty good, but when it came time to enter my user name and password for each newly created calendar, I did have to make a correction to the user name in the pop-up box. During the setup process, I highly recommend entering each account’s password manually until all accounts and calendars have been added to make sure each account can be successfully accessed, then, take advantage of Thunderbird’s master password feature to enable a single password for every e-mail account and calendar.

Now that I have been using this system for a couple of weeks, can it be called an “Outlook Killer?” I think not. Unless IMAP is enabled on the corporate server, Thunderbird, and most other e-mail clients that support IMAP [except Evolution], cannot access Microsoft’s proprietary Exchange service that syncs information between a Microsoft server and your laptop, smart phone, or toaster. Many corporate agencies have [foolishly, IMO] decided to utilize Exchange to manage all of their e-mail, calendars, meetings, and contacts and force employees to use Exchange/MAPI. Feel free to check out the scoop on MAPI support in Thunderbird. It’s no “Outlook Killer,” but the combination of Mozilla, Google, and a few third-party extensions, however, is a good start and at least provides people with a feasible option…for those who like “free cake”…or perhaps “free birds.”