CQ readers know that I have had a lot of fun with e-mail clients over the past year. I started off using Thunderbird, but after having a few meltdowns, I decided to look elsewhere.

First I tried Outook, the comprehensive program included in Microsoft Office. I actually liked Outlook a great deal, Its integrated approach made it easy to use schedules and e-mail all at the same time, as well as organize my contact lists somewhat rationally. Unfortunately, as an intergrated program, it kept eating up memory and slowing the computer to a crawl.

I then switched to Outlook Express, which I had used successfully in the past. It ran faster than Outlook, but had its own quirks. It didn't handle junk mail properly, and had a nasty habit of junking the wrong e-mail message when I used the toolbar. I switched to Eudora last week in frustration, even paying for the license. However, while Eudora ran well and has a tremendous number of features, I just found the interface too clumsy for efficient use. The user has to open each mail folder as a tab, and then switch between tabs just to see how many unread messages await and to access them.

So now I'm back to Thunderbird's latest release, and hopefully I can keep the meltdowns to a minimum. I'm compressing the folders on a regular basis and automatically deleting anything older than 30 days. I'll let you know how it goes, but it's nice to be back on familiar ground.

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