Home Office Environment Setup With Google and Mozilla

I want to enjoy both email and calendar services at home as well as at office. How? As I know, the office environment is set up by Microsoft Outlook plus Exchange Server which cost thousands of dollars. However, my home environment is totally free. Because there is no post available to fully document how to setup such a home environment according to my search on Google, I try to make such a post to fill in the blank (I am sure that someone has done it before but I guess nobody mashes the content up like this).

Email Service

Let’s start with Mozilla Thunderbird and Gmail for email service. Gmail is free, so why not sign it up? If you need an invitation, leave a comment and I can invite you. Then please read Gmail help on IMAP settings and follow the measures to set up Thunderbird for your Gmail account.

I have been using Thunderbird for years and I love it so much.

Calendar Service

Google Calendar is a more open and convenient service compared to Microsoft Exchange. And it is free, so after getting your Gmail account you can sign up Google Calendar here.

Then please download and install both Lightning and Provider for Google Calendar. At last follow the instructions here so as to subscribe to your Google Calendar inside Thunderbird.

What’s Missing Here

I am sure that some readers here may never use Thunderbird before. I did omit a few details and if you are familiar with Thunderbird, you know them already. They are,

• How to download and install Thunderbird. The process is quite natural and easy, so please get your hands wet.
• How to install Thunderbird Addons. The process is not that straight forward but you can ask Google for answers, isn’t it?

Finally I have this post completed, and wish you enjoy reading it.

BTW, a key feature of the free solution that Microsoft fails to offer is that Mozilla tools and addons are available on all major platforms such as Windows, Linux, UNIX, and Mac. Therefore enjoy the solution, no matter what platform you are on.

BTW2, I do know there are other solutions to set up a similar environment but I have been stuck to Mozilla and Google so I do not have time to try them out.