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Latest Version of Thunderbird released by Mozilla

January 12, 2006

The latest version of the email client of Mozilla, Thunderbird, with a host of a new range of additional features was released. The new version is named as 1.5. The upgrade includes better security, automatic updating and other enhancements to provide a more user friendly email experience to its users. Thunderbird 1.5, an open-source application, is available as a free download.

According to Scott MacGregor, technical lead on Thunderbird for Mozilla, there have been 18 million downloads so far of the software, which appeals to both consumer and business users. He said that while most think of Thunderbird as a good alternative for a consumer application such as Microsoft's Outlook Express, it also is comparable to enterprise e-mail software such as IBM's Lotus Notes and Microsoft's Outlook.

Among the new security features in Thunderbird 1.5 are Kerberos authentication and integration with server-side spam filtering. The new client also includes a built-in phishing detector to help protect users against e-mail scams, providing an "extra line of defense" for preventing users from getting caught up in e-mail identity- and information-theft scams. Improvements to the user experience in Thunderbird 1.5 include auto-saving of e-mails in progress as drafts and automatic spell-checking as an e-mail user types a message.

Source: InfoWorld