How I like my Thunderbird

I've been using Evolution for many years and very few criticisms. Until I bought a netbook and discovered that Evolution has a minimal width larger than the 600px of my screen resolution. So I switched to Thunderbird but I had to tinker a bit with it before having it behave like I want. This is all the steps it took:

1. Install the Lightning Calendar extension.
2. Install the Provider for Google Calendar extension to allow synchronization between Lightning Calendar and Google calendar.
3. Sync my Google calendar with Thunderbird. File>New calendar, select 'from network', Google, enter the calendar URI.
4. Install the Zindus extension to synch Thunderbird with my Gmail address book.
5. Install all the extensions to have Thunderbird properly integrated with Ubuntu Unity: Global Menu Bar Integration, Messaging Menu Integration and Unity Launcher Integration. Search for 'unity' in the Get Add-ons page.
6. Install the Spanish and French language packs. Save each archive and install it manually through the Get Add-ons page.
7. Install the CompactHeader extension to reduce the size eaten up by the headers' bar.
8. Change the time locale to Great Britain. Thunderbird is using the Linux LC_TIME locale to format the dates and time. I like my Ubuntu in American English but I like my dates to be formatted according to the British format. It's enough to add LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8" in the /etc/environment file (source).
9. Install the ConfigDate extension to fine tune the date length.
10. Change the default download policy of the pictures in html emails. Use the config editor to set the "mailnews.message_display.disable_remote_image" value to false. Thunderbird will now download the pictures without asking permission (source).