Eudora, one of the earliest and much revered desktop e-mail clients, has been reborn under the Mozilla Thunderbird umbrella. The new beta version of Eudora 8 and the Penelope add-on are [available for download from the Mozilla site][2].

The new Eudora/Penelope project is the result if Qualcomm's decision to open source the code for Eudora when the company announced it would no longer continue development of the e-mail client. At the moment the Eudora client is essentially Thunderbird with an Eudora skin and keyboard shortcuts, but the roadmap promises to bring additional features over from Eudora in the future.

Existing Eudora users will be happy to see that the new client should be able to import your mail store without issue and the interface and menu layout should look more or less similar to the last version of Eudora. 

The [Penelope extension][1] (which works with Eudora and Thunderbird) provides new icons and sound files as well as familiar key mapping, icons, toolbar layout and column layout. 

If you're a Thunderbird user, Eudora 8 has some features you might appreciate, such as the ability to add any menu item to the toolbar. Also note that if you do use Thunderbird, Eudora will recognize and user your existing Thunderbird settings. Eudora 8 also supports Thunderbird add-ons or at least it should. I had some problems using the Lightning extension -- YMMV.

Eudora 8 works with both POP and IMAP e-mail accounts, but, like Thunderbird, doesn't support Microsoft Exchange (though there are some plug-ins the purport to do the job).

The developers of Eudora/Penelope would like everyone to know that Eudora isn't an attempt to compete with Thunderbird, rather it's meant to compliment it.

>Whereas "Eudora" is a branded version of Thunderbird with some extra features added by the Eudora developers, "Penelope" is an extension (also called an "add-on") that can be used with either Eudora or Thunderbird. The Eudora installer includes the corresponding version of Penelope along with it so there is no need to install Penelope if you are installing Eudora. Most features in Penelope can be accessed when used with Thunderbird, but there are a few that require Eudora in order to work correctly and it's not something that gets tested.


For many Eudora was the first real GUI-based e-mail client and it's nice to see it continue in a new open source form, but at the same time many of those same people may have moved on to popular web-based clients. Still, for desktop e-mail users missing the golden days of Eudora, you're solution has arrived.

Keep in mind that the new Eudora 8 is a beta release so, as always, proceed with caution.


[1]: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope
[2]: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope_Releases