Thunderbird 3 and Lightning

A 'problem' from my ISP saying that I've got too much e-mail prompted a look around to see if there were any good archive extensions for Thunderbird.  I'd looked a long time ago and not found anything that was really close to what I wanted.  I read the feature was in version 3, so decided to upgrade.  I use thunderbird because it the only e-mail client that seams to support IMAP properly.  Using IMAP, instead of POP3, means that my webmail client has everything in it when I go to look at my email somewhere else.
The upgrade itself was smooth enough, but I was rather surprised that it started all new folders and downloaded all my e-mail again.  Still not to worry - that is a one off process.
Not all the changes in Thunderbird are immediately obviously useful.  The main one you will see is the combined in-box, sent, deleted, spam/junk, archive folders - if you have more than one account.  I haven't got used to this yet.  Its especially annoying when I try to empty junk or deleted folders.  The folder must be opened and each deleted folder cleared separately, this is true for the others as well.  The 'tabbed browser' approach, rather than separate windows make it consistent with the browser which is a good thing, and the buttons for reply, forward etc. are an excellent idea.  The search capabilities have been improved and with them comes the penalty of indexing.  Indexing is intrusive and stops the client responding while it is occurring.

As to the archiving - I will be looking for an extension.  The message is move to the archive - no problem.  It is not put in a year folder - as suggested by the documentation, neither is its source folder structure respected, so I will just have one enormous archive.  Not as good as it should be.

One oddity I have noticed - the address book and the message filters do not open in tabs but are still put in separate windows.

One problem I've had is the constant requests for my IMAP password.  This has improved with the 3.0.2 upgrade, but is still occurring. 

I've tried Sunbird in the past - to try to get a calendar - like Outlook and Lotus Notes.  It was OK, but a bit clunky and I wasn't sure that the development was occurring.  Now I have installed Lightning.  The pretty calendar view that is on the extensions webpage is accessible from a small icon that appears to the right of the tabs - which is not immediately obvious - and the the calendar opens in a tab.  I haven't tested it with outlook yet.  That will come next week - so I may add to this review then.

btw - the picture is NOT the thunderbird logo - its just my sense of humour