Thunderbird 3 = FAIL
james January 13th, 2010
I am upgrading my primary workstation to Thunderbird 3. This process is a hopeless failure though I hope to create the necessary step changes to be able to upgrade other employees here as there are many features in TB3 that I like. Let’s start with a step by step of the failure:
1. Upgrade from TB2 to TB3. The default setting is to sync all folders. To put our demand in perspective, we have corporate google accounts with our sales account sitting at over 330,000 messages and 10GB. My work account is lower than this but still over 50k messages and my personal gmail account is over 100k messages. That is three accounts climbing to 480k messages and over 20GB of stored email. We use email a LOT and search with it often. This is part of why we were excited to see new features in TB3. However, this means all 480k messages and 20GB will be downloaded on my local station AGGRESSIVELY, bogging down the processor and everything on this workstation for days. NOT GOOD!!!! This should NOT BE A DEFAULT SETTING and should not be this aggressive (or there should be options for how aggressive this process is). Gmail trash, all mail and spam folders should not be cached by default as they are either redundant or uncessary.
2. While other programs like Google Chrome have shown the beauty of a lightweight, simple, fast UI with multi-process infrastructure and it’s own task management system, TB3 is a throwback to single-threaded evil. While aggressively downloading 20GB and 480k messages, it is nearly useless for other functions. NOT GOOD.
3. The download process appears to be happening in small blocks. I have fast fios and many work environments have good connections. For massive transactions like most new TB3 users will experience who have over 50k messages, there should be some sort of a mass import/export or large block operation available. There has to be a better way than this silliness of 20 messages at a time that account for only a few kb per transaction.
4. Lightning with google calendar. Explicit guide / process for google calendar please… it’s hugely popular and a function many, many people will be using so this should have far greater automation.
Here are the solution steps:
1. DO NOT ALLOW SYNC. Add one directory at a time over a period of several days and load up several each night. TB3 should be smart enough to do this on it’s own but failing such advancement I may try to write scripts for rollout.
2. No solution. I am 1/4 of the way through importing now and the main db file is already 1.5GB. This is not efficient and is a major blow to larger email accounts and/or corporate systems with large email volumes. Though this may be a good system for the average user with less than 10k messages and a few GB stored, it is a nightmare scenario for IT in serious environments.
3. I know there are block size settings which I changed in TB2 and I will likely be working on this and will post recommendations as I find them for larger blocks. browser.cache.memory.capacity was already 30720 and all fetch_by_chunks variations were false. I changed browser.cache.memory.capacity to 32768 which I do not forsee having any effect.
4. I will have to dig for the steps in the current version and figure it out.
I am not even able to get to a review of this software because the initial steps are simply broken. My typical rule is to wait 6-12 months after a release to buy or install but the supposed improvements to gmail and searching would be a huge benefit for our staff. In the end, this is the very cause of the failure and clearly sufficient testing has not been done. I feel for the average user with large amounts of email who will enter a s&!@storm when installing and using this software as compared to the TB1 or TB2 experience.
NOTE: This was written quickly and mid-failure which should help explain the broken, convoluted English… good luck with the translation to proper English grammar!
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