Re: Thunderbird Lightning

Jeff Crosby wrote:

All,

I have been using Outlook for email & PIM. Have been thinking of moving to
Thunderbird for some time - I heard there was a calendaring/todo/etc addon
coming that would make Thunderbird a full PIM.

Last night I discovered it exists: Lightning. Any of you Thunderbird users
using it? Issues?

I could see our company abandoning MS Office altogether and replacing with
OpenOffice & Thunderbird.

As with any comparison, your mileage will vary. I currently use three add-ons in Thunderbird: Lightining, ReminderFox and Contacts Sidebar.

Lightning is a pretty good calendaring system, and it seems to support the standard emails you get with calendar attachments. That being said, there are quirks: when I first get an event in GMT, it seems to store it successfully, but later (typically when I close Thunderbird and reopen it) it loses the timezone conversion so the time is off. I'll get an event for 15:00 GMT and it initially shows as 9:00AM, but if I then close Thunderbird and open it, the event "moves" to 3:00PM (15:00) CST. It's a nasty quirk that I haven't had the time to pin down entirely.

Other than that, though, the reminder capability is pretty good and the calendar is serviceable.


ReminderFox is a really nice ToDo function. You create lists of todos, and can add your own lists. The nice thing is a little "tied string" symbol in the status bar: you hover over it and a list of your current todos pops up. You can decide which todos show up in this popup list.


Contacts Sidebar puts your contacts in a small sidebar to let you access them easily.
Joe