It’s funny what those of us who are familiar with computers and the internet take for granted. I have been dealing with a lot of confusing and annoying issues on a clients new Vista computer with the new Windows Mail client.

It was behaving very strangely, losing emails and whole folders, then showing them days later as ‘recovered folders’. The final straw came when it lost the 2 configured email accounts completely. I decided to move the client to Thunderbird. After installing and configuring it I called the client in to show him how to use it as some of the terminology is different.

“And this is free?” he asked. “Yes” I reply without thinking. “How?” he asks, “What’s in it for them?”. I’d never really sat down and thought about it before. How much dedication do open source developers have to do what they do. Hundreds of man hours of development, all for a product that is given away for free! This is just a quick post to say a big thanks to all of you!