I find the Thunderbird set up annoying. In my case I do know what I want (incoming mail is "fetchmailed" to a local IMAP server and outgoing is relayed via a local postfix server) but Thunderbird likes to make it's own suggestions...

That said I like the email program. I also use it for calendar and contacts (caldav /carddav), running radicale on the server. That way, I can share between Thunderbird and Androids without anything going on Google.