Thunderbird Issues

Sort of, but for me it usually occurs as a phantom request for a server userid and password if the server is responding far too slowly. Hasn't happened to me for ages touches wood

Blank bodies are the typical appearance after a newserver timeout.

Never seen that. Check you haven't inadvertently changed settings.

Main annoyance for me is that some settings with a "don't ask this question again tick box" reset periodically when updates are downloaded.

The really annoying thing about Thunderbird is that it has some quadratic-time algorithm down in its guts that runs like molasses in January if the folders get too large. It also has a memory leak, so that you have to nuke it periodically when it goes catatonic.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I don't know if I've seen the slow down thing or not. Once in a while it does get *very* slow, but that is very seldom.

The memory leak is not too bad. I have seen it need to be restarted once in a fairly long time, so it is not a large hindrance.

I see this on messages I have already read, so I know the bodies were downloaded at one point.

I understand how hard it can be to get bugs fixed in software that is maintained on a donated time basis. If the bug isn't nailed down no one will sign up to fixing it since the first thing they need to do is reproduce it.

Shame, otherwise T'bird is a pretty nice package. I also use the Lightning calendar which seems to have solved most of it's quirks. At one time it was a bit of a PITA, but works smoothly now. Importing .ics files can't be done by drag and drop is the worst "feature" I see now.

Yes, my news server (GigaNews) has such large message retention, Tbird would croak on some of these newsgroups. I switched to Knode (standard Linux utility, but I think also available on Windows) and it doesn't have that problem. It still allows you to integrate email and newsgroups fairly seamlessly.

Jon

Yup. Got to try twice then, mostly that suffices. That's the modern cyber world, sometimes stuff has to be kicked again to work. Just like Archie Bunker's TV set which he repaired by kicking it, except that once it went PHUT ... *PHSEEEOOOUUU* after the last kick.

In the default setting Usenet message bodies never download, they are just marked as read.

It never asks me that.

You can set T-Bird to roll off headers after x months. I have it set to two months except for a few low traffic NGs.

My Internet is not working again today. So I tried using T'bird offline to read some posts with info I wanted to check out. T'bird gets hinky moving to other groups when I try to read a post in a given group. It eventually settles down, but this is very odd.

I see it clearly that many messages that I have already read have not been saved and I can't view the bodies. I'm writing this now and it will be sent later if Internet access returns. Meanwhile I'm going to try setting up a netbook that is pretty underpowered for most things, but may do ok reading newsgroups.

Funny that at one time browsing the Internet was considered a low end task that didn't take much from a computer to do well. Web pages have grown so complex that a good processor and lots of memory are essential for a pleasant experience. I can watch downloaded movies on my netbook, but not so much online videos. Lots of web pages are slow to complete and some just hang, like Amazon.