I have been using Thunderbird on Windows for mail for as long as it has existed, but it recently started to look old and in need of a UI refresh. When I got my MacBook Pro, I tried to use Apple’s Mail.app with GMail’s IMAP support, this seems to have revealed a few bugs in Mail.app. So then I tried Thunderbird 2, it liked GMail alot better and with a few tweaks, it worked OK, but it laked the unread mail count on the dock icon. All-in-all nothing yet liked GMail and worked perfectly on Mac.

I then decided to be bold and try the Thunderbird 3 Beta. Jackpot, the unread mail count worked (most of the time) and it’s new Smart Folder feature made GMail look almost nativity supported by Thunderbird (even with Google’s weird mapping for IMAP folders). Now with RCs out, it seems Thunderbird 3 is shaping up real nice, and it looks really good on Mac OS X. Now if only they can give it a nice new look on Windows.