absolutely

Thanks. I'll continue to install based upon your reply.

In Gmail there are some isues You have to enable "less secure clients"

read this esp point 2 and 3 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6009563?hl=en

I may add no client made by anyone (but Google) is considered secure according to them. And they put up their own standard and wants the world to follow

I just signed up and got all the emails from someone else's gmail account in my email. That doesn't feel very secure to me. I will try to contact the person who's emails I received in my inbox and let her know just how "secure" things are with Thunderbird. HMMMM????

If you got someone else email than that's a BIG error and it has nothing to do with whatever client you are using. You send your credentials to gmail and they connected to another account, not even Google would like to do that. Either you send the wrong credentials and then you happend to have the same password as this other account. Try using webmail on that account. Change your password!!! If you can access that account he/she can access yours.