'''Mozilla Thunderbird''' is a cross-platform e-mail, Usenet, and RSS reader from Mozilla. The following steps outline how to set up a Virginia Tech e-mail account with Thunderbird 2. The last steps about SSL are essential to sending mail from off-campus with some [[Internet service providers]] such as Verizon.

The Name field will list whatever you put here in the From: line of those who receive e-mail from you using Thunderbird. You should probably go ahead and enter your full name here. Enter <code>pid@vt.edu </code> for the e-mail address, replacing pid with your Virginia Tech PID. Then click Next.

Be sure the POP button is selected, enter <code>pop.vt.edu </code> for the incoming server, and then enter auth.smtp.vt.edu for the outgoing server. If you want to leave your messages on the server and use IMAP instead, click the IMAP button and enter imap.vt.edu for the incoming server. Note that if you have accounts in Thunderbird already, the software will default to the outgoing server of one of your previous accounts. We will need to fix this later if that is the case. Click Next.

Sadly Thunderbird does not ask in the wizard if your server uses SSL, and assumes that it does not. However, the VT mail server does, so we will need to enable this before we can connect to it.While it is not absolutely necessary to setup SSL SMTP (outgoing mail) if you will only ever send mail from on-campus, setting it up is recommended.