Thunderbird

I have at least 7 email accounts and it's difficult and annoying to keep track of them all. The most obvious thing is I have to login 7 times to check everything, since I do not turn on "remember passwords". Anyway a while back I discovered Thunderbird (TB) can be made to handle many popular webmail accounts such Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, with the help of the Webmail extension. I have been using it for a few weeks and have to say it saved me a lot of time and trouble. I can now check 5 of the email accounts without logging in at all, and TB will regularly check for new mail so I won't miss anything. Granted this method is not perfect -- from time to time I still need to log on to manually delete the read messages as the Webmail extension will only grab them from the server but not remove them. However logging in once every week isn't so bad.

If you have been using any of these popular webmail services you will know they are all becoming more application-like, that is instead of having to refresh the whole page every time only a portion of the screen is updated, and you can use keyboard shortcuts and drag-and-drop to manage messages. They are essentially programs running inside your browser. While I quite enjoy using these new interfaces none of them can compare to an actual program running natively on my computer, in terms of response and functionality. Perhaps one day the internet will become so fast, and our computers so powerful that applications inside a browser is just as snappy as native programs, and none of these would matter. For now, I am sticking with TB.