It’s been over 10 years since we first met, and in that time of great changes you’ve been a constant friend. You’ve changed, I’ve changed, but through it all I knew I could always depend on you.
We did great things together. Some things that no-one else ever did. We did them together, a friend at work and at home. It’s thanks to you that I could find a way of saying some things to my friends that I could never say to their face. It’s thanks to you that I found a way of keeping in touch with them all far more, and no longer had an excuse not to. It was you that gave me the strength to chat-up girls that previously I would have probably chickened out on. You gave me all this, and you gave it all expecting nothing in return, for free.
And now we can look back to the minutes, hours, days we spent together. You’ve remembered everything, you’ve never forgetten anything. A testament of my life and yours. Happy memories, sad memories.
Thank you, friend.
But now the time has come for us to part. Time moves on ever faster and recent years have not been kind to you. Some of your recent attempts to keep up with the younger crowd have not worked out too well and you’re beginning to show your age. I’ve tried to cling on to you, but I can’t pretend any more. It’s no use, we have to go separate ways. But I will never forget you.
Today I moved my all my email off my Pegasus email client and started a new relationship with Thunderbird . sniff Seriously, I’ll miss Pegasus. It’s only now that I’ve done it do I realise just how significant a link in my life it’s played in the last 10 years.
As I said, it was just beginning to age. Email had moved on and while Pegasus has gone through a number of changes, it was looking more and more dated. Recent upgrades had tried to catch up on some of the functional issues, but it was all becoming a bit of a confusing mess. Some of the last upgrades actually reversed what had been done previously because they were developmental dead-ends.
Thunderbird actually lacks some of the more intricate functionality that Pegasus has, but it’s a far “cleaner” and cohesive an application, particularly if you’re using it in conjunction with Firefox. And because it’s open source it has more options and possibilities for the future.
It goes without saying that both are preferable to the dreaded Outlook. But if I was wishing to move from Outlook today, I’d definitely choose Thunderbird over Pegasus.
A radically overhauled Pegasus is promised this year, but there’s been promises like that before. Apparently the author of the application is struggling financially and he may have missed the boat. Thunderbird has stolen his place. It’s a shame. I’m seriously considering donating money for all the good he’s done in the past. He wrote one of the first and best email applications for the internet, then gave it away for free because he felt it was the right thing to do. Perhaps the internet is too mainstream and cut-throat for such idealism now.
I hope he proves me wrong and I’m sheepishly switching back six months from now. It was a total pain transfering all my emails too…