Following on the heels of the Firefox 2.0 beta in mid-July, Mozilla has released the first 2.0 previews of its Thunderbird email client. Firefox may get most of the attention, thanks to its flashier job, but it is the trusty email reader that conducts most of the killer-app conversations on a daily basis. Let's see what the new build holds in store.

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Thunderbird binaries are available for i386 Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. I tested the 2.0 alpha build on Ubuntu Dapper Drake. As with any email client, you should always make a backup of your messages before installing a new version -- especially so on pre-release software like this. Also, be aware that most extensions built for Thunderbird 1.5 will not work in 2.0 preview releases.