Surfing the web isn't the only thing the Internet is for. A email and news client is vital to most users this days.
After testing both tools for quite a while I decided to write down my impressions on their good and bad points.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Thunderbird delivers safe, fast, and easy emails, with intelligent spam filters, quick message search, and customizable views.

What I like:
*It's open source and free, is built by a community.
*Themes - allow you to change the look and feel of the user interface and personalize it to your tastes.
*Extensions - add on extra features without using shell hooks.
*Junk Mail filtering - Thunderbird uses Bayesian filtering which is one of the best forms.
*Cross platform - It runs natively on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
*Automatic folder compression - those DBX files can get awfully big, even if you delete all your mail. Thunderbird can compress them automatically, rather than waiting for you to do it yourself.
*On-screen alerts - You can have it pop up a message near the system tray when mail arrives.

What I did not like:
*Does not have an integrated calendar.
*Missing important rules - some very crucial ones, such as "Stop processing more rules" (very important) and "Display new email window".
*Flaky IMAP support - Thunderbird uses threading more efficiently and pretty much never locks up while retrieving IMAP folders. However, things get really strange when folders are created behind its back. Or deleted.

Summary:
Thunderbird takes the familiar look of Outlook Express and streamlines it, adding important, useful features without cutting back on anything. There's not a giant leap between this and Outlook Express.
Helpero rating 9/10
You can download Mozilla Thunderbird for free from here.


Oulook 2003

Outlook 2003 is included in all Office 2003 Editions. It introduces the first major change in the user interface
since Outlook 97.

What I like:
*Outlook provides more ways to sort and organize emails. In the default view emails are grouped by date, which is very helpful.
*Integrated calendar - this feature is already useful in itself, but it really shines in the presence of an Exchange server.
*Mark for Follow-up - I can create a follow-up reminder that will prompt be on a specific date and time to get back to a particular message.
*Junk E-mail Filter - starting with Outlook 2003 Service Pack 2, the Junk E-mail Filter will be enhanced to automatically evaluate any incoming message to see if it might be suspicious, potentially fraudulent, and part of a "phishing" scheme.
*Shortcuts - it is not Outlook specific but yet so convenient.


What I did not like:
*Poor support for IMAP service.
*Spam filter is slow - it's not as fast as Thunderbird's spam filter, though.
*Thread display - displaying threads in the Outlook pane has improved a lot, but it's still not as pleasant as Thunderbird.
*Rules are flaky - sometimes, rules just stop working altogether. It has something to do with client-side versus server-side.
*Comes with Microsoft Office.

Summary:
It'll do most of the important jobs, such as handle a family's worth of different email accounts, automatically filter emails into folders, maintain an address book of contacts and generally facilitate the sending and receiving of emails.
Helpero rating 8/10

Conclusions:
Thunderbird has my preference these days, but Microsoft has packed their software with a lot of features that are going to be hard to beat, both in the "private organization" and "corporate environment" spaces.
I prefer to use Thunderbird because it is a fully featured, secure and very functional email client and RSS feed reader. It lets you handle mail efficiently and with style.

written by Florin C.