Next Generation Mail Clients Reviewed 743
kreide writes "E-mail is the 'killer app' of the Internet; an enormous number of messages are exchanged every day, and while web-based mail has become very popular in recent years, many people still prefer the added speed and flexibility of a mail client application. In this review I compare the next generation of the most popular e-mail clients, including Evolution, KMail, Opera and Mozilla, and their usability in dealing with large number of messages."
hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, wait... That's me.
Re:hmmm (Score:3, Funny)
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Funny)
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
And I am not a Microsoft employee or shill. I prefer Linux on the server and Windows and Office on the desktop. It has nothing to do with politics, cost, freedom or anything else. It has to do with what I am comfortable using.
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Funny)
It has to do with you never having used a Mac!
(straight to hell with my karma)
Re:Outlook 2003 - Issues for Admins (Score:5, Informative)
I find Outlook 2003's spam filtering spotty. Sometimes it captures a message, sometimes it doesn't.
Of importance to admins will be the fact that Outlook 2003 does not play well with some LDAP servers, and it can sometimes throw funny "errors" (warnings in reality) on IMAP mailboxes that can worry lusers.
The menu organization for configuration/customization/settings for Outlook 2003 is horrible and after using it for months I still have to click through different button paths to find the right panel.
Outlook is also a huge resource hog, but that goes without saying, given that it is a modern kitchen-sink app.
Re: Configuration Issues (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure if it's a config design issue as much as it is a familiarity issue. I dumped Outlook because of the unease I had with its security, and Outlook 2002's spotty compatibility with Windows XP. Thunderbird is better in some ways, but it definitely has its downsides, not the least of which is the painful configuration of multiple accounts and general preferences.
Re: Just give me... (Score:5, Informative)
Great little tool...
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Please..send plain text.
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
No. The DRM, if implemented, is more of an Office thing. And then only in a corporate environment, at the server.
User A creats a doc, and assigns it certain restrictions.
He sends it to user B. When user B tries to open it, it authenticates back to the server, and asks "I am allowed to let user B see me?"
If the server says yes, then good.
User C gets a copy, and it asks again. "No. Your creator wishes only user B to see it. Run away and hide."
Outlook, indeed Office, is not telling you what to do with your stuff. This is strictly voluntary, chosen by the document creator, and set up by the system admin.
Evolution (Score:4, Informative)
Next killer app? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Next killer app? (Score:3)
IM generally requires the party on the other end to be logged in and sitting at their PC. E-Mail does not.
Re:Next killer app? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Next killer app? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe because that's e-mail? You can hardly call it an instant message, anymore
Re:Next killer app? (Score:5, Informative)
The main point is that IM is not even close to a viable alternative to E-Mail and it was somewhat off the wall for him to suggest so.
Re:Next killer app? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Next killer app? (Score:5, Interesting)
I sent new documentation to a dozen of my coworkers yesterday; same story there.
I'm glad IM works exclusively for you. While IM use is growing rapidly, email use is as well.
I get no spam at work after 8 years. I get plenty at home, of course. If my company had it's own internal IM that didn't require public servers out of our control, it may be feasible, but our information will NOT be stored on MSN or Yahoo servers, PERIOD. There is simply no substitute for email. Yet. It will be the client and not the core concept that gets updated.
Re:Next killer app? (Score:5, Informative)
Your company could run its own internal Jabber [jabber.org] server. There are lots of clients [jabber.org] for the employees, one of which would probably be suitable for or adaptable to the company's environment.
Re:Next killer app? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Next killer app? (Score:5, Insightful)
seriously. this brings up the biggest hole in email as a communications medium: it's inherently broadcast.
for email to really become the predominant communications medium, privacy and authentication must be dealt with. whether that's through some open encryption/signing standard like gpg/openpgp or through some proprietary technique doesn't really matter (although obviously, i'm rooting for gpg). what matters is that people a) realize the shortcomings of email in this area and b) do something about it.
Outlook XP/2002? Where's Outlook 2003? (Score:5, Insightful)
Feel free to mod me down as a troll, but the author isn't being honest with the community. Open-source folks will be better off knowing what's in the current version of commercial products, not the older versions.
Re:Outlook XP/2002? Where's Outlook 2003? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Outlook XP/2002? Where's Outlook 2003? (Score:5, Insightful)
Next generation mail client (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Next generation mail client (Score:3, Insightful)
Evolution mail import? (Score:3, Interesting)
Where's Mail.app (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do we need local clients (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a roaming contractor, so the alternative was trying to manage email clients at several locations, and constantly finding that something (address books, mail archives, etc..) was out of sync.
Re:Why do we need local clients (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what IMAP is for.
Re:Why do we need local clients (Score:3, Interesting)
Mind you, These days some companies block webmail too, at least major sites like hotmail/yahoo/etc.. My system would probably slip under the radar unless they use heuristics.
Actually I used to do my roaming by constantly updating mail redirects on my personal and c
Re:Why do we need local clients (Score:5, Informative)
That's what IMAP is for.
No, IMAP is just for message storage. You still have to manage the configuration of the clients which access the IMAP server. IMAP simply lets you store your messages in a portable format. If you want to share other things, such as address books, you need to use something else - perhaps LDAP.
If you want a single 'client' at all locations, you probably want to use webmail.
I read through the reviews... (Score:5, Insightful)
E-mail is NOT the killer app of the Internet. I have used plenty of different email clients and they all work the same. It is just as important as any other Internet communication device (IM, IRC, whatever).
In order to get a feel for how each mail client handles daily tasks, I conducted my review by performing a number of tasks:
Download a reasonably large amount of messages, about 2100 in total
This is funny to me. I consider myself a "regular" computer/Internet user. I don't see the need to download 2100 messages as part of my "daily tasks".
Why is new mail notification (on 3 of the 5) "Audio Only"? I much prefer not having sound and just having a popup notification (or a small blurb come up):
[10:08] > From: Kitch@removed.org
[10:08] To: Bill
[10:08] Subject: Re: ok.
I guess I am old fashioned...
I also find it strange that only a single one (KMail) supports Maildir. The rest are mbox. I thought Maildir was the future?
Just my worthless review of a worthless review,
Re:I read through the reviews... (Score:3, Funny)
Join the Fedora Mailing list...
Evolution is not evolving (Score:3)
There does not seem to be a roadmap for it, either. Maybe Thunderbird [mozilla.org] is in the future for me.
No import? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No import? (Score:5, Informative)
Because he's reviewing a severly beta version of Evolution? The version he's using doesn't even refresh the inbox list until you change folders.
Stick with 1.4.5 (which does support importing mailboxes) until 1.5 becomes 1.6
Incomplete review (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Incomplete review (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, Eudora seems to run just fine on my Mach kernal, BSD-based system.
It is misleading though: In this review I compare the next generation of the most popular e-mail clients, including Evolution, KMail, Opera and Mozilla...
As I understand it, the most popular email clients are Outlook, Lotus, and Eudora. He means "the most popular e-mail clients for Linux... oh, and an old version of Outlook for comparison".
From Wired magazine: (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:From Wired magazine: (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft Office XP correction (Score:5, Informative)
Well, yes, it doesn't support virtual folders in the way that others implement it.
However there is an option called "Current View" (in "View") which allows you to see your inbox in a number of different ways. For example: by sender, by followup flag, by conversation, past seven days.
In addition, you can create and define your own custom views. So if I want to see all messages with the word "fish" in them, with one or more attachements, where I've been cc'ed and posted in the last week, then I can do so.
Which sounds very similar to virtual folders to me.
Gnus/Emacs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Gnus/Emacs (Score:4, Informative)
And that's about the only reason to use Gnus for mail, other than the fact that you don't have to leave Emacs. Try to browse through the Gnus Manual [gnus.org] and see how many different configuration choices you have. I prefer Netscape Messenger for reading mail and news, but that's just because I only need the basic features.
Re:Gnus/Emacs (Score:3, Informative)
I prefer mutt for my mail, but I've started to use gnus for my news.
MUTT sucks the least! (Score:4, Informative)
Some of the reasons why I hate all the non-mutt clients:
1. WINDOWS BASED: excellent virus support (is that a feature or a bug?) + (correct me if I'm wrong) hardly any fetchmail / procmail / mbox support. BTW, these are not the only reasons for hating (hehe) outlook
2. GUI BASED: 'normally' heavy on system resources + un-necessary dependence on mouse + need to have an Xserver if you wish to check your mails from your colleague's windows machine (who is another building).
3. Text Based: either not as fast or not as configurable as mutt.
- Mutt loads my 9,000 messages (approx.) mbox faster than pine (haven't compared elm/gnus).
- Searching for a particular messages takes me atleast 1/10th the time on mutt because it allows localizing searches and sorting results. Don't ever challenge any mutt user on this one.
- Pine/Elm are not colorful, which is a very usable feature I believe.
- Threading. Don't know if Pine/Elm have it (please correct me if I'm wrong)?
- Mutt allows keybindings for almost everything. So, when I press F7, I see all messages from my friends; Esc F7 -> everything except from my friends; F8 -> Friends + Family; F9 ->
Reasons why I sometimes hate Mutt:
1. doesn't have news support
2. doesn't work if my keyboard is not plugged in (i.e. solely with a mouse)
3. no group object model (yet to be invented)
Someone should do the study again.
Re:MUTT sucks the least! (Score:4, Informative)
This is also a function of how you're loading those messages. I don't know about POP performance. Pine is considerably faster at IMAP. It also supports a billion local mailbox formats, some of which are speedier than others.
- Searching for a particular messages takes me atleast 1/10th the time on mutt because it allows localizing searches and sorting results. Don't ever challenge any mutt user on this one.
This will also depend on how you're getting your mail. But I will grant you that the reg exp searches are quite good & mutt probably wins on searching ability. Now if only Mutt could search across multiple mailboxes...
Pine/Elm are not colorful, which is a very usable feature I believe.
Pine has color. I have different colors for different levels of quoting setup. I also have it set to mark different colors using filters (so mail from someone I don't know is a different color from someone I don't). You can also make header colors different than body colors (which you can't do in mutt).
- Threading. Don't know if Pine/Elm have it (please correct me if I'm wrong)?
Pine threads. I think I may like Mutt's threading better still, but Pine does it quickly & accurately.
- Mutt allows keybindings for almost everything. So, when I press F7, I see all messages from my friends; Esc F7 -> everything except from my friends; F8 -> Friends + Family; F9 ->
This is one thing I am jealous of. I'm also jealous of the macro language & scriptability of mutt. Finally, you guys have a smaller footprint (though I suspect that the lack of features that Pine has out of the box has a lot to do with that).
Reasons why I sometimes hate Mutt:
I would add:
4. the addressbook is crappy
5. IMAP features leave a lot to be desired
Killer app? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the internet has had several killer apps that kept the boom going:
a) Communication: This includes IM's and email. In the early days it was mostly email.
b) PR0N: Actually, it's been around since the early days of the internet. Heck, I remember it was a big part of BBS's before I got on the 'net
c) Games: This really hit when TCP/IP games became popular over the internet. Less need to lug your PC over to a friends' for a LAN party, and you mom can play solitaire with your aunt in another country
d) Music: I know a lot of people that subscribed to high speed just to get supposed "free" music.
Email is perhaps, however, one of the "killer apps" that has suffered the most during its time online. Games have their botters/hackers, pr0n has its misleading popups, and music has its Britneys, but by far SPAM has become one of the larger unfixed problems so far (patched, perhaps, but not fixed)
Re:Killer app? (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't the central idea of solitaire that it is played by oneself?
K
Um... Outlook XP? (Score:5, Informative)
There are also several innaccuracies in his review of the product.
1.) Outlook does indeed support emoticons. Use Word as your default text editor in Outlook.
2.)You CAN forward attachments, both in line and otherwise...
3.) Outlook can do key binding... it's under Options, Customize.
4.) I've been creating and managing mail lists in Outlook since Outlook 98...
The biggest missing feauture is... (Score:5, Interesting)
All belly aching aside, I'm planning on employing a white list of valid e-mailers some time this year. For me at least, the promise of 'anybody' communicating via e-mail is dead.
External Editor Support! (Score:3)
Sylpheed, judged "not next generation enough" by the reviewer, enables me to compose in a custom konsole/xterm/rxvt in Vim, or Gvim -- a capability that makes it the only usuable GUI client IMHO.
They have some facts wrong about Opera. (Score:5, Informative)
I know it inside out... the review makes two mistakes in the matrix of features.
Firstly Opera does have both audio and visual mail notification.
Secondly Opera Mail does have the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts of your choice.
Thirdly it does support emoicons.
If the reviewer gets so much wrong about Opera then there is no telling how many other mistakes he has made.
Re:They have some facts wrong about Opera. (Score:4, Informative)
Further, I am using the Linux version and there is another mistake, as it does allow importing mail from both generic mbox files and netscape 6/7 mail.
I didn't read the rest of this review, as those errors killed it for me. How can I trust anything else in the article?
Also, why the hell are so many people supporting Outlook in here? Hasn't it been shown time and again that using either Outlook or IE is like internet suicide?!
I guess IMAP and non-GUI are not "next generation" (Score:4, Informative)
For what it is worth, I actually use PINE (which is an even better IMAP client than mulberry). It is a shame not to see some very good text-based clients such as pine and mutt in this comparison as well.
Outlook and IMAP (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact that "deleting" does not shield the user from the IMAP concept of marking for deletion. I am unable to move many of my users to an IMAP-based mail implementation because Outlook doesn't correctly use the metaphor!
(Thunderbird, on the other hand, sets up a virtual "trash" folder, which is really just posts that have been marked for deletion-- that's the way it should work!)
Re:welcome to 2004 not 1984 (Score:3, Funny)
I find all this focus on easy-of-use and simplicity boring. I hate it whem computers become so simple that my grandmother can use them.
I still prefer text-based. (Score:5, Insightful)
Text-based MUAs such as Mutt are still (IMO) more effective at dealing with large numbers of messages. They do have a learning curve, but you can cut through the masses much more efficiently. External programs are called for HTML, images, encryption, etc. in the Unix tradition (and even Microsoft uses an external HTML viewer). For those of you who edit a lot of text too, Mutt even calls an external editor for composing messages.
No, they're not for everyone, or perhaps even most people. However, my father is an auto mechanic working as a shop supervisor for UMBC. He doesn't like PCs very much, but he asked me to "set up PINE" (meaning an SSH client) on a new machine that the campus IT staff had set up for him with Netscape 7's email client. He's on some high-volume lists, and it's just too slow to use a GUI client.
For the record, I do prefer Mozilla to w3m, because I find it to be faster for most tasks (even for freshmeat work, where I have to edit a lot of text in Mozilla's editor versus the ability to use Vim in w3m). I also use GAIM, and used Pan back when I downloaded large quantities of fansubs. But email is basically dealing with a lot of text which sometimes has other stuff, and for that, I find text-based to be the way to go.
Inclusion Criteria (Score:4, Interesting)
And Outlook is open source and available for UNIX platforms? Yes, I know that Outlook / OE are popular, but it is kind of a shame that Eudora was omitted, given that the review was to cover the Windows environment. Unlike Outlook, it is possible to configure Eudora to avoid some of the security mis-features of Windows. (For example, you can disable Microsoft's HTML rendering engine.) The reviewer missed an opportunity to provide a little education. (BTW, I am sure that there are other good mail clients; I mention Eudora because I'm familiar with it.)
What about Sylpheed? (Score:4, Informative)
There is a definite lack of predefined fields in the address book - no place to store phone numbers or addresses, for example. It does have a feature that lets you add ad-hoc fields (user attributes) to the contact's record, but there isn't a way to make all the contacts have the same add-on fields without defining them for each individual contact. It is also capable of using vCards, but it only seems to get the name and email address out of them, ignoring all the other info.
If it wasn't for the poor address book, I'd be using it on my Windows box as well as my Linux system.
Re:What about Sylpheed? (Score:3, Informative)
I used evolution for a while, but it has too many things I don't use (scheduler etc) and it doesn't have enough mail options in my view and a bit slow when you have many messages in a folder.
Then I tried kmail, which is very nice, but due to a bug which seemed to only occur on my ppc based system, it was unable to open my mailbox. I wanted to try something different.
So I tried sylpheed-claws (I think it's something like the developement version of
Re:What about Sylpheed? (Score:4, Insightful)
When you don't need all of the bullshit features of the big and ridiculously bloated mail clients out there, and you want something to do just e-mail, Sylpheed simply cannot be beat. It is bar-none the absolute best mail client I have ever used. Period.
Even if I *did* need the features offered by other mail applications (calendar, journal, etc.) I'd use those separately and still keep Sylpheed as my mail client. It's that good.
no mention of Protocol support ?! (Score:3, Insightful)
I know that Kmail does a pretty good job of supporting most of them (PLAIN, LOGIN, GASSPI, KRB5, etc)
Sunny Dubey
How to get mail out of outlook express&into li (Score:4, Informative)
For me the easiest route to getting people out of outlook express and into any open source email client is to open an IMAP email account for them at fastmail.fm or runbox. Then I setup the account under outlook and move all the email to that account. Since IMAP is server-based, they can switch to Linux and all their email is just there.
Then, they can do one of two things. If they are moving permanently to Linux, move all of their emails to the local mbox from the IMAP one and set up their pop service with whoemver they have as their email provider. Or if they are double-booting, continue with the IMAP setup, which allows them to email from both sides of their computing world and makes the transition to full-time Linux user easier.
Fantastic KMail Feature ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Kmail Dialog [blackapology.com]
(its KDE3.2 with Aqua Icons, Baghira and clever configuration btw)
nick
The Bat! (Score:4, Interesting)
Thunderbird is almost there and I'm guessing sometime in the next year it'll be good enough for me to move to it.
Outlook mostly useless? (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, Outlook is NOT a bare bones mail client. If he wanted to compare the MS mail client, that would be Outlook Express.
Also, why didn't he review any good closed source clients? This seems to be a silly OSS vs. MS thing. If it was a real review, he would have at LEAST needed to include Eudora and Pegasus, both of which have been around for ages (much longer than any of the ones he reviewed, in fact).
Web based clients not considered? (Score:4, Interesting)
with clients such as Squirrelmail and Horde/IMP, it seems that this would be the path more in line with the current thinking. I use Squirrelmail, and it does (almost) everything I want. What it doesn't do can be added via modules, or via coding of your own modules (which I'm working on now).
P
None of them are the next generation (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, IBM/Lotus Research: "Remail" (Score:5, Insightful)
Research? M2 is here already. (Score:4, Interesting)
A couple more points about clients (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Outlook XPs version of 'threading' is kind of crappy, in my opinion.
3) Why do all the open source email clients look exactly like Outlook? I've never particularily liked that view of email. Can't anyone think of anything better?
4) I use mutt, Mail.app (OSX) and Opera as my main mail clients. Mutt is still the most feature-rich mail client that I've ever used, inability to display HTML and images inline notwithstanding (and most of the time, I like it better that way.) Mail.app under OSX is quite nice too, though I don't like the way that it won't check IMAP servers automatically when it checks your main Inbox. I always have to syncronize my folders. Also, it should display the number of new messages that you have in total in all of your folders (excluding the spam folder) if you want it to.
5) I haven't used Outlook 2003 yet, but Outlook XP is excessively annoying. It doesn't do anything the standard way, as near as I can tell. Threading, quoting, replying - it's all terrible. I hate the fact that text email isn't default.
Old generation mail clients: Gnus (Score:3, Informative)
New mail notification: Yes.
Encryption: Yes
Follow-ups: Probably not. I have ever used the build-in calendar.
Forward attached/Inline: Yes
Write HTML mail: No
Multiple accounts: Yes
Customizable keybindings: Yes, extremely
Full index search: No, requires an add-on (nnir)
Advanced searching: Yes
IMAP search: Don't know, I don't use IMAP.
Search folders: Yes
Spam filter: No build in spam filter. Good support for external spam filters, and good general filtering ability.
Handle mailing lists: Yes, if I understand it correctly.
Do not download mail rules: Don't know.
Labels for e-mail: No, not if they are talking about RMAIL style labels.
Create filter from message: No
Emoticons: Yes
LDAP: No
Message threading: Yes
Mail storage format: mbox, babyl, mh, usenet, and more...
What I want is ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I also wish somebody would embbed vim in Web browser. Editing in those damn HTML textarea is a fscking pain !
HTML = next gen ? It should be netiquette. (Score:5, Insightful)
It pisses me off to waste time understanding how people are quoting emails in order to find what they actually wrote. I especially like people who quote everything and then insert replies with a supposed different color. Very convenient when I answer with mutt.
It pisses me off to fight with Mozilla Thunderbird in order to remove decorative bloat with pictures added to every mail sent by my boss.
It pisses me off to removely download a 10 Mb large email through a 128Kb link just to see that it's a BMP screenshot send through outlook instead of writing text.
It pisses me off to receive mail with no subject. And then people reply to it and the subject becomes "Re: Tr: Tr: Re: Re: Tr:".
It pisses me off to receive mail that was actually a "reply to" a message that was 2 years old and that has nothing to do with the previous thread.
It pisses me off to receive mails whose content is in the subject with an empty body.
It pisses me off to receive fully quoted emails, including attachments (even when it's BMP screenshots) just when the real text added by the sender is "ok".
The next generation email is probably when people will respect the netiquette again.
I love and hate KMail (Score:3, Informative)
First, you can't sort email from an IMAP mailbox into another folder. Yes, really. POP sorting works well, but if you use IMAP, then you have to manually move your mail or use server-side sorting.
Second, KDE needs a real LDAP backend. Evolution's LDAP client is fine - you can add, edit, and delete entries as your permissions allow. KAddressBook will only let you search for entries. I maintain a small LAN and I would love for all users to be able to sync their Palms with an OpenLDAP addressbook so that we don't have to push changes to each individual user.
If KMail can get these straightened out, I'd almost consider switching from Gnus. Almost.
I'm a happy dinosaur: I use MH (Score:5, Interesting)
George Santayana keeps invading my consciousness. Most of today's mail readers are blindly taking the road that I abandoned 25 years ago. I don't want to read my mail using a database system. I want my mail to be a full-fledged member of UNIX society, not locked up inside a single application.
At RAND, we had a homebrew mail system that worked about like today's readers: mail was kept in a file, with a sidebar index file for quickly locating individual messages. It fell out of sync regularly, but on those dog-slow machines, rebuilding the index file was a coffee-break operation.
Norm Shapiro should be credited with the insight that UNIX already provided the cleanest solution to mail storage: messages are files, folders are directories. He and Bruce Borden hammered things out over about six months of conversations, then Bruce wrote the first version of the MH system over a weekend.
MH is ancient. There is no doubt about this. The original MH is as dead as T. Rex; people use NMH now. It's almost all text-only. It does have a MIME wart on the side, but just barely. If you want to use mice, scroll wheels, and other "modern" goodies you need to use a front end like EXMH.
BUT: 99.95% of all the legit email I get is text-only. "showproc" can deal with MIME mail that just asks for a different font, and EXMH does understand basic HTML. You can create MIME attachments if you need to.
And it's the skip-loader of email systems. It doesn't care if there are 8,000 messages in a folder. It just works. And it's fast.
On the Mac I use Mail.app. It does work (mostly, except when Apple is having one of its periodic days where WebDAV doesn't work, and they're in denial [nothing wrong here, move along please]). It has nice filtering features. It has threading.
It also feels like a toy. I get the feeling that if I pointed it at an 8,000-message inbox, it'd fold like a cheap suit. Certainly it'd be tough to deal with that many messages through that interface.
For the big time mail flows, I'm sticking with MH. Thanks again, Norm and Bruce.
Re:And what's wrong with Outlook? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:And what's wrong with Outlook? (Score:5, Insightful)
RE: RTFA time. (Score:4, Informative)
For example:
As part of the stat breakdown in the boxed chart in the review (did you read the article? Please read the article..), Outlook is flagged as not having full index searching.
To wit, `full index searching` has a superscript and is described thusly:
This is true but only half accurate -- in an Exchange environment it is completely possible to enable full text indexing of everything on the Exchange server. It just isn't usable on your home system as a standalone internet email client.
Even if you could use full text indexing at home, in a POP3/IMAP environment
Assuming you do IMAP and keep most of your data on the server the argument becomes, `I don't want to have to read/download everything to find a single message`. The counter argument is simply, `Where do you think you're gonna keep your full text index? On your ISP's system?`
Anyway, full text index searching isn't something I see as viable for a home platform -- and if you're talking about in a business or enterprise setting, Outlook does support it - through Exchange Server.
Re: Continued factual inaccuracies on Outlook (Score:5, Informative)
While looking at your Inbox,
Tools | Options | first tab is Preferences | E-mail Options.
Area called `On Replies and Forwards`. Dropdown list called `When forwarding a message`. Options are:
Strike out `is used` and write in `can be used` -- I routinely disable Word as my email editor because I don't want everything Word can to do happen to my email (such as substituting graphical smileys for the universal
The fonts and formatting all work splendidly in Rich Text mode, which is 200% less suck-tastic than HTML mail.
While composing an email -
View | BCC Field
Damn, I know that's hard to find.
Unfortunately for the reviewer, I find Outlook remarkably easy to use, and always have. The reviewer's inability to find these simple, basic pre-installed options in Outlook calls into question the thoroughness of the review of any product listed. I'm just catching these because I happen to use Outlook fairly often.
Re: Continued factual inaccuracies on Outlook (Score:3, Insightful)
I e-mailed the author, and pointed out some of the more obvious problems with his review.
Yet another case of the the anti-Microsoft world spreading their own version of FUD. And because they are not part of the legitimate media establishment, they can do a really shoddy job of journalism, and never print a retraction, or correction. In fact, their readership would be disappointed if they ever did correct their mis
Re:And what's wrong with Outlook? (Score:4, Informative)
While it's true that Outlook is becoming more secure, having the possibility to script a mail client is not the best of ideas if you ask me. I prefer to stay clear of script-enabled email client since I don't ever need that feature. (I know, it's disabled by default now in Outlook)
Also, outlook isn't free. Which is irrelevant if your boss pays for your software but kinda sucks at home. Unless you copy it of course...
Re:And what's wrong with Outlook? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps having a mail client that supports scripting which someone else can trigger is the problem, not scripting per se. Apple's Mail, for example, fully supports AppleScript but it won't trigger a script on receipt of a mail message. AppleScripts have to be activated by a user.
Of course, there are dumb users who trigger their own infections by clicking on attachments without checking, but the same goes for a file lo
Re:And what's wrong with Outlook? (Score:5, Funny)
Zealotry : Mindlessly supporting a group, company, individual, product, or concept without regard for facts or opposing views.
"With MS's recent drive for security, it's probably significantly more secure and robust too."
Pot meet kettle.
Re:And what's wrong with Outlook? (Score:5, Insightful)
how about the simple fact that it enable's the Dill-weeds in marketing to make a "outlook stationary" that is almost 1 meg in size and causes the email servers to fricking choke as the 1.2 million employees stupidly follow the morons in marketing and use it.
HTML email is the stupidest thing ever created, but how outlook does it by having all the graphics IN the fricking email is a magnitude worse.
There is one reason that 90% of the sysadmins on this planet absolutely and utterly HATE outlook.
Re:okay (Score:3, Informative)
Re:okay (Score:3, Informative)
Re:outlook 2k3 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:outlook 2k3 (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope that the other mail clients can achieve a similar level of functionality and interface attributes.
Gone are the days where a simple pop client will get the job done for me. I need a more robust package. Outlook certainly fills this position, but it's not cheap and it only runs on Windows.
I'd buy Outlook 2003 if it was available for Linux.
Re:outlook 2k3 (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new around here...
Re:outlook 2k3 (Score:5, Informative)
Q: Why didn't you use the newest version of Microsoft Outlook? This doesn't seem like a fair comparison.
A: The only reason Outlook was even included was to serve as a reference with what is commonly available for the majority of users (which still run Windows unfortunately) today.
Using the latest Office 2003 would not have done most of them any good, as upgrading can cost hundreds of dollars (or more!), and might not be an option for some time. After reading the review they can, however, immediately decide it is time to try out one of the alternatives, several of which are multi platform.
Also, I only had Office XP at hand when writing the review, which only helps to better illustrates my point I think.
Re:outlook 2k3 (Score:4, Insightful)
I use thunderbird on a daily basis but outlook 2k3 is on a different level as far as UI polish and features go. It is a very powerful tool for coordinating large quantities of mail, appointments, contacts etc. The reason I use thunderbird is that outlook is overkill for popping mail once in a while. Additionally, I like some things in thunderbird such as extensions and UI. Also its development status and the ability to influence its development is appealing. I see thunderbird as a nice testbed, a good outlook express replacement but not a corporate mailclient. The only two clients that come close are evolution and kontact. Comparing those two to the full featureset of outlook 2k3 would be an interesting read.
I don't mind people pushing alternative mail clients. What I do mind is this attitude of ignoring features in outlook in order to prove the point that some OSS client is better. If you do a comparison, make it a fair comparison. At least the developers of the mac outlook had the guts to say that thunderbird has a superior mime implementation compared to outlook. This is true and acknowledging it internally allows them to focus on improving this in outlook.
Re:outlook 2k3 (Score:4, Informative)
I use Microsoft Entourage to handle a collection of two IMAP accounts and one POP account. It has a few flaws (randomly stops subscribing to IMAP folders, requires you to download entire messages, including attachments, the address completion seems to include forged spam headers but not half the real senders in my inbox) but on the whole I'm pleased with it. And it's on OS X so there are no worm propblems.
The Linux readers just don't cut it. KMail, which I've used happily with POP accounts, updates IMAP accounts apparently whenever it feels like it. I'll hit the mail check button an 20 minutes later something might happen. Evolution works relatively well for one IMAP account but won't handle the other at all. Neither feels as smooth as Entourage, neither is as feature complete, and surprisingly neither offers transfer progress methods nearly as complete as Entourage's. (Evolution is especially useless for the latter.)
I've barely used Outlook, but Microsoft's Mac unit blows the doors off the Unix competition.
Re:Outlook (Score:5, Informative)
SIGH. About six comments are moderated 3 or better with this exact same sentiment. So not only did the posters not read the article, neither did the moderators. While you can argue that his logic is flawed or that he could have included Outlook EXPRESS, he specifically states
The only reason Outlook was even included was to serve as a reference with what is commonly available for the majority of users (which still run Windows unfortunately) today.
Using the latest Office 2003 would not have done most of them any good, as upgrading can cost hundreds of dollars (or more!), and might not be an option for some time. After reading the review they can, however, immediately decide it is time to try out one of the alternatives, several of which are multi platform.
Also, I only had Office XP at hand when writing the review, which only helps to better illustrates my point I think.
ALSO note that the author seems to be focusing on Linux mail clients (or at least AVAILABLE for Linux), which Outlook is NOT (AFAIK...).
Synchronization with Exchange Server (Score:3, Interesting)
I am responsible for 3 sites throughout the metropolitan area, and have some users who have to do work from home. Before me, they would connect through the VPN and either use Windows Offline Files or Terminal Services to access their work. Their Outlook 2000 client (2002
Re:How can we fix the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
In other words, for each person who has an e.mail account with us, they would get a message saying "such and such wants to send you e.mail, about this topic. Do you accept?"
If so, the e.mail goes through and the person can be authenticated in the future. If not, they can be blocked, either once, or permanently.
It could serve as an in-between system until something better is thought out, or it might function on a permanent b
Re:MH? (Score:3, Interesting)
I use mh as well as sylpheed-claws. Any graphical client I use at home has to support mh-style folders, because I often read mail remotely via ssh.
I used to use mutt, but I found that between it and the graphical application I was using, they kept stepping on each others toes. With mh, there are no lock files and no toes to step on.