Thunderbird performance?

bononos

Diamond Member
Aug 21, 2011
3,945
193
106
How does Tbird deal with large mailboxes (eg files >1-2Gb?). Its slower than other clients because part of it is based on Mozilla scripts. Does it only have performance issues on slow mobile Core2 era cpus or is it still an problem now?

I'm looking at Claws, Tbird, Zimbra because EM free only supports 2 accounts, Pegasus/Sylpheed has no calendar, Evolution (windows) is outdated and has alot less development going on even for Linux.
http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2014/02/5-best-email-clients-for-open-source-environment.html
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
60,966
11,301
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I don't know if it's slower or not, but I use Tbird for everything. Performance is acceptable.
 

Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
10,371
762
126
There are some cases where Tbird will appear to freeze, and say that a script is taking too long... so, it isn't the best client for really big e-mail boxes, but, it is OK most of the time.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
71,340
14,093
126
www.anyf.ca
I find it's slower than before, but it's still 100x faster than Outlook. Not that that is a very good metric to compare to. Outlook is ridiculously slow. Just SELECTING emails can take forever. Never do ctrl+A in a big mailbox. :p

I was curious so just ran a quick test. Went in my spam folder to clear it. 13k emails moved to trash in a bit over a minute. (using IMAP)

I do recall this process being much faster though, I'm not sure what changed. But I still consider it acceptable. Not like it's something I do every day. I have a folder with over 100k emails in it and navigating it, opening emails etc is fast. It is using mbox format on the server though, I'll be curious to see when I switch to my new server which will be Maildir. I think those are slower (but have other benifits).
 

Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
14,559
248
106
Tbird is pretty darn fast for me (compared to Outlook). It is set to run the Compact when it gets to too large, but I manually run every so often anyway.
 

nerp

Diamond Member
Dec 31, 2005
9,867
105
106
Nothing can handle a truly large mailbox like Outlook. I have a 40GB inbox with more than 100,000 emails. Outlook flies. All other apps crumble and crash.
 

PliotronX

Diamond Member
Oct 17, 1999
8,883
107
106
Nothing can handle a truly large mailbox like Outlook. I have a 40GB inbox with more than 100,000 emails. Outlook flies. All other apps crumble and crash.
I sure hope that is in PST form because it would take forever to sync OST the first time :D 2016 is especially fast for me. This is an interesting topic because I've had to set up TB for a few users lately and I've been using the Tete Atelier Intel Compiler build. So far the users have had smaller boxes with no issues but it makes me wonder about the e-mail hoarders.