Portable Thunderbird: Known Issues, Recommended Settings

[James]

Known Issues with Portable Thunderbird 1.0

• Sending email requires an SMTP server. For your Thunderbird application to be truly portable (not just reading and receiving your emails on other computers but being able to send too) then you need an ISP independent email account that makes available an SMTP server (such as Gmail).
• Trojan/Virus detected - AntiVir and Avast, on more than one occasion, have claimed there is a trojan or virus in the launcher. This is due to poor trojan detection in both products that will occasionally mis-identify many NSIS-based applications as trojans. It will usually occur after a definitions update. You should contact your antivitus provider and let them know of their mistake.
• Themes and Extensions - Most themes and extensions should now work with Portable Thunderbird -- including those that make use of the component registry. A handful will still fail, though.
• Enigmail/GPG Incompatible - The Enigmail extension is currently incompatible with Portable Thunderbird.

Recommended Settings

• Disable Junk Mail Filter (IMPORTANT) - The adaptive Junk Mail filter in Thunderbird should be disabled for each account you set up. The Junk Mail filter thrashes whatever media it runs from (1,000 to 3,000 I/O writes just for marking a message as junk) which will decrease flash ram life and cause the application to run VERY slow.
• Fetch Headers Only - This option can be turned on within Account Settings under Server Settings. Though this will make messages take longer to come up, it may decrease the number of writes to the USB drive, increasing drive life. (This appears to be a POP-only setting.)
• Compact Folders - You may wish to set Thunderbird to notify you when compacting your mail folders would save you space. 2mb is recommended for most people.

Please read: Using USB Flash Drives - things to remember