I've been using Eudora for the past 10 years or so, much to my delight. I've always loved the client and in fact I even purchased a license for it. When I read a couple of days ago that a new version was available, I installed it and the install promptly downgraded my version from Paid Mode to Sponsored Mode - thus showing ads in the client.
It seems my license had to be renewed, yet at the same time Qualcomm announces that Eudora will become an open source program, under the wings of the Mozilla Foundation. The client will be free to everyone once it has become OS which is expected to be somewhere in 2007. Not bad as I'm all in favor of open source software, but then again Qualcomm wants me to shell out another USD19.95 to keep my current client in paid mode till the free version arrives? Not bloody likely!
So today I started migrating away from Eudora and towards Thunderbird - a client I already use on another machine. Installation was a breeze, importing messages went quite smoothly, but somehow I couldn't get the addressbook imported. Whenever I tried using the Import tool, it just stated : no addressbooks found. I exported my Eudora addressbook in csv format, imported it in TB and ended up with a totally garbled mess. Not the solution either.
Luckily, thanks to the excellent TB support forums, I found the solution : rename the Eudora addressbook file (NNdbase.nnt) to NNdbase.txt and it'll easily import into Thunderbird. Fixed!
I'll use this opportunity to clean out the old mailboxes and get rid of long forgotten messages while I finetune everything to my liking. I'll sort of miss my trusty Eudora, but it's time to move on.