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What I really want is a single tool that supports text
processing, numerical analysis and producing figures, graphs
and charts all in the same program. </blockquote>
sounds very much like you would be in favor of having an easier
access to integrated formatting and a reach text editor (like
word, which is basically what outlook is - it's simply a shell
for a proprietary HTML dialect that is based on Winword). This
is used a lot in the corporate world and makes things like
copying formatted text from a Word document to / from an email
very easy.</p>
<p>The advantage of Thunderbird would be that you could have rich
text (and in some cases superior to word) but it is based on the
common standard of HTML and the mail editor (Composer) isn't
very good at giving these features to the user. I have been
preaching for a while that Thunderbird's email editor needs rich
formatting in an easy to use UI (like the Outlook = Word
Ribbon), which would give users a similar experience. But I
wouldn't be sure whether that would really solve the issues with
integration into Microsoft Office; probably a little bit of a
can of worms as the "HTML" that Outlooks (read "winword")
generates is still a fairly convoluted mess. Integration with a
modern HTML5 compatible editor would not be easy.</p>
<p>So my question would be: if Composer had the rich features you
suggested (Formatted tables, paragraph formats + templates,
charts) and would give you a similar UI (e.g. context sensitive
ribbons) would you use it or still change to Outlook because it
is included in a MS Office pro license? I personally would
prefer Thunderbird because of web standards, but I am afraid if
you are entrenched and used to a Microsoft environment then
offering all these options is pointless because Thunderbird has
no influence in the development of Libre office or other
integrated suites. <br>
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<p>I would still be interested on what would convince you to
accept a non Microsoft mail client.</p>
<p>One thing I prefer about Thunderbird is the ability of
integrating many different mail accounts and the configurability
via Addons, while being very light weight in its "vanilla"
configuration.<br>
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<p>Axel<br>
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