Lightning

Noté 3 sur 5 étoiles

par Bruce Button le jan. 15, 2009 · lien permanent

For many reasons I would like to move completely away from Outlook to Thunderbird. An essential component in the migration is the calendaring and tasks function.

Towards this end, Lightning is a very nice add-on - as far as it goes. I like the clean interface and the facility to create different calendars, each with its own colour. And to be able to switch calendars on and off.

However, Lightning is just not yet developed to the point where it is a feasible alternative. Reasons are: 1) Only allow one category, which is treated as a simple field. One really needs a list on the side, allowing one to select which categories to show. 2) The interface is just a little too slow. 3) More fields are needed to be able to synchronize effectively with PDA databases. 4) The synchronization solution needs to be worked on - Birdiesync is good, but expensive; Finchsync is too hard to set up for the average user.

These may seem like nice-to-haves, not essentials, but a task and calendaring programme is so much at the centre of organizing one's work and life that it really has to be slick and efficient if it is to be feasible. We need something more than a toy for geeks!

I do hope that the developers see the opportunity of making Thunderbird (with Lightning) a real open source solution to Outlook.