Why I’ve switched from Thunderbird to Evolution
November 23, 2008
On my computer (unfortunately) I’ve always had a dual boot setup. For my email, calendar, and contact management Thunderbird was my favorite pick. Was until I had a closer look at Evolution.
Why have I now switched?
1) Thunderbird is email and contacts only, so there is the need to install Lightning or Sunbird to get calendar and tasks functionality. With Evolution, everything is already packaged, more convenient for me.
2) Syncing Evolution with webservices is very easy! I have integrated my GMail (in IMAP), GCalendar, RememberTheMilk (1-way syncing), and Google’s contacts. Just go through the options of creating a new Calendar, Task List, Address Book, etc. and choose where you information is placed on the web.
Important note, unlike some other reviews that I heard, Evolution handles GMail’s IMAP just as well as Thunderbird.
3) Integration with my desktop: Gnome’s clock applet will show you not only day, time, and weather information, it’ll also show you any events you have in Evolution. Plus, sending files through email is easy with “Send to…” options inside Gnome.
4) Palm syncing, yes I still have a Palm… I’m currently using my Palm more like an ebook reader, but if I ever wanted to sync my email, contact, calendar, and task list, I can do it with Evolution (absolutely not with Thunderbird).
I realize some of the above functions are still from plug-ins that Evolution has, but being convenient by bundling these plug-ins saves me time. Less setup time with same (and even a bit more) functionality has now made Evolution my favorite office tool.
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Posted in Office
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:17 pm
That works with Thunderbird as well.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I’ve been looking for a solution that allows me to sync my Gmail data with my eeepc so that I have my calendar, to do list and contacts available when I’m offline and need to make a phone call.
These days I’ve given up on PDAs and I’m using my eeepc instead. I’ll revise that decision once Android devices are available in Australia.
I’ve been having trouble finding something that will sync the google contacts dependably. I hadn’t thought of trying Evolution since I mainly use KDE, but I’ll have to give it a go.
Do you find that contact sync works reliably?
November 24th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Wow! I’m actually thinking of switching as well.
November 24th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Good to know Gmail is now supported.
In the past, I’ve played with evolution and successfully hooked it into Groupwise, Exchange and IMAP servers. Even the Outlook/Exchange Calendar function worked nicely. upon testing, events entered in the OWA (web) interface showed up fine in Evolution.
However, while Evolution integrated well with all the services I tested, the more I added, the more unstable it became. With Groupwise, it would crash often. Exchange sometimes mangled my calendars, duplicating apts due to some Time Zone thingy. With all my accounts (6) setup, it also crashed frequently when updating, to the point where I simply gave up.
I now use Thunderbird for everything but Exchange at work. And that’s only because my office won’t open up the IMAP interface and blocks traffic at those ports anyway.
November 24th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I recently switched from Evolution to Thunderbird because Evolution would not work with my GoDaddy address and smtp server for some odd reason, and since that is my primary address it was rather important!
November 24th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
@adriantry yup, contact is syncing pretty well with me. Excellent idea for the eeepc! I have one but haven’t used it for a couple of months so I had forgotten about this possibility too.
November 25th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
[...] that would allow me to have a 2-way sync between my desktop and RememberTheMilk. As I’ve mentioned before, Evolution does only 1-way sync to my favorite task management web [...]
November 28th, 2008 at 10:48 am
[...] wrong direction? Why I’ve switched from Thunderbird to Evolution < http://opencomputer.net/2008/11/23/why-ive-swi…; [...]
December 31st, 2008 at 10:17 pm
[...] Evolution actually suprised me quite a bit at how easy it was to use and at the same time incredibly resourceful for my emails, calendar, and contacts management. [...]