Javier Soltero: The Outsider Microsoft Tapped To Reinvent Outlook (windowsitpro.com) 184
v3rgEz writes: In a wide ranging interview, IT Pro talks with Microsoft's Javier Soltero about his plans to help Redmond get its groove back when it comes to email, walking a fine line between keeping traditional Outlook users (and IT administrators) happy while radically reworking software that hasn't seen a huge shakeup since 2003.
just go ahead and call it ReInvent (Score:2)
Re:just go ahead and call it ReInvent (Score:5, Funny)
The Magic 8 Ball says: "Outlook not so good."
Re:just go ahead and call it ReInvent (Score:4, Insightful)
Please don't. It's hard to think of a more bloated resource hog, far too much for what it is supposed to do, and yet still lacking in basic features in other areas.
I despise Exchange, all the more because I have been so long forced to administer it (since the Exchange 97 days).
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry next time M$ Lookout and it's server decide to exchange you communications data for a corrupt file, you can always contact M$ for a new copy of the data because you can bet inside the next user agreement will be "You agree to a copy of all data, communications, calender details and contacts, will be forwarded to M$ servers and by using this software you agree that M$ gains full copyright ownership". Of course you can bet the charge to send you back the information you used to own will be quite
Re:just go ahead and call it ReInvent (Score:4, Interesting)
Please don't. It's hard to think of a more bloated resource hog, far too much for what it is supposed to do, and yet still lacking in basic features in other areas.
I despise Exchange, all the more because I have been so long forced to administer it (since the Exchange 97 days).
As a user, I newer appreciated Exchange+Outlook before I moved to a different company that use Google Apps instead. There might be better alternatives than both of them, but right now I miss Exchange+Outlook so f'ing much.
Re: (Score:2)
Please don't. It's hard to think of a more bloated resource hog, far too much for what it is supposed to do, and yet still lacking in basic features in other areas.
I despise Exchange, all the more because I have been so long forced to administer it (since the Exchange 97 days).
As a user, I newer appreciated Exchange+Outlook before I moved to a different company that use Google Apps instead. There might be better alternatives than both of them, but right now I miss Exchange+Outlook so f'ing much.
I used Outlook from 1997 (Outlook 97) through 2008 (Outlook 2003 or so). I was a heavy user. I moved to Thunderbird, and can honestly say that I do not miss Outlook or Exchange or the multitude of problems that they caused. I would, however, be very hard pressed to be able to replace Thunderbird with something else that does everything I need it to do.
Re: (Score:2)
The biggest problem is that Exchange really works best with Outlook, so that corporate reliance on Exchange means that they're helping Microsoft sell Office and discourage competition. Then since corporations assume everyone uses Outlook they feel no hesitation in using Exchange features that are not portable to other clients.
Microsoft really does not support the concept of open and flexible APIs as everything they do is intended to lock in users.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft is not a software company! Microsoft is an EVIL company that uses software to deliver evil.
That's perfect. I'm stealing it.
Re:just go ahead and call it ReInvent (Score:4, Insightful)
It took about a decade before all that you would have expected in version 1 was going. All the fun of configuration by registry hack, a fifty step bare metal recovery procedure with possible showstoppers at every step and memory leaks that meant a scheduled reboot once a week to avoid the thing freezing up.
So, to those that say "no other single thing can replace MS Exchange"? MS Exchange itself is a suite of applications so why insist on replacing many with one?
Re:just go ahead and call it ReInvent (Score:5, Insightful)
So, to those that say "no other single thing can replace MS Exchange"? MS Exchange itself is a suite of applications so why insist on replacing many with one?
Because one "Suite" that can be installed by clicking next, next, finish (and maybe some checkboxes), and is supported as a unit by the publisher, is whole lot different from 'Hey I cobbled together 50 different things that sort of do something similar but not quite, and good luck getting enterprise support for it, and pray that upgrading one package in that mix doesn't break the entire thing'.
That's why.
Re: (Score:3)
So, to those that say "no other single thing can replace MS Exchange"? MS Exchange itself is a suite of applications so why insist on replacing many with one?
Because one "Suite" that can be installed by clicking next, next, finish (and maybe some checkboxes), and is supported as a unit by the publisher, is whole lot different from 'Hey I cobbled together 50 different things that sort of do something similar but not quite, and good luck getting enterprise support for it, and pray that upgrading one package in that mix doesn't break the entire thing'. That's why.
If you're only running a very small business (50 employees, even then probably smaller than that), then sure - Exchange can be that simple to administer. Any real Exchange installation is going to consist of a cluster of Exchange Servers backed up by a cluster of MS SQL Servers, all connected to the AD , and none of which are going to be that simple to install or keep running. And after you have all that setup, then you have to craft in all the little extras for your users to ensure they get the functionali
Re: (Score:2)
If you're only running a very small business (50 employees, even then probably smaller than that), then sure - Exchange can be that simple to administer. Any real Exchange installation is going to consist of a cluster of Exchange Servers backed up by a cluster of MS SQL Servers, all connected to the AD , and none of which are going to be that simple to install or keep running.
The most basic install of Exchange can easily support 1000 users using the default next, next install on a single box. Maintenance consists of ensuring it has regular backups. It really is that simple (I was an Exchange Admin in a previous life and don't recall ever needing SQL for anything)
If you have more than 1000 users then you should also have an admin that knows how to deal with greater scale
And after you have all that setup, then you have to craft in all the little extras for your users to ensure they get the functionality they want.
What are you talking about exactly? The only thing we usually did was show people how to set up their signatur
Re: (Score:2)
If you're only running a very small business (50 employees, even then probably smaller than that), then sure - Exchange can be that simple to administer. Any real Exchange installation is going to consist of a cluster of Exchange Servers backed up by a cluster of MS SQL Servers, all connected to the AD , and none of which are going to be that simple to install or keep running.
The most basic install of Exchange can easily support 1000 users using the default next, next install on a single box. Maintenance consists of ensuring it has regular backups. It really is that simple (I was an Exchange Admin in a previous life and don't recall ever needing SQL for anything)
The most basic installation of dovecot+postfix or exim supports 10,000 users and no SQL server is needed. In fact, even at 100,000 users I'm not sure a SQL server is necessary...even in a cluster of them.
If you have more than 1000 users then you should also have an admin that knows how to deal with greater scale
Yes you should have a competent admin, but then you should for 50 or 100 users too. There's nothing miraculous about 1000 users or 10,000 users. As I noted, other solutions have no issue with it and scale far easier on hardware with lower hardware specs.
And after you have all that setup, then you have to craft in all the little extras for your users to ensure they get the functionality they want.
What are you talking about exactly? The only thing we usually did was show people how to set up their signature. Everything works out of the box.
Example: Outlook and even Exchange can only support 10
Re: (Score:2)
With respect, go ask your "people" and you'll hear something like the above complaints. Maybe even the one about the patch that set MS Exchange to be an open relay by default no matter how it was set before - the spammers really loved that one.
Who said anything about failure? It was about how success is difficult, vast resources required (extra machines for failover plus just getting
Re: (Score:2)
With respect, go ask your "people" and you'll hear something like the above complaints.
Go ask any support person about the stuff they support and they'll bitch about it. That is how the support universe works.
It was about how success is difficult, vast resources required (extra machines for failover plus just getting enough performance) -
Dude, this is the same issue as every system ever. Have you ever supported any large or critical piece of infrastructure. It all needs to be large and redundant.
hence your "several hundred Exchange servers" under the adult supervision of whatever is running the easily rebootable virtual machines instead of a small number of big boxes running on bare metal with less overhead because they don't need to be rebooted all the time.
I don't even know what this means? Why does a physical machine need to be rebooted less often than a VM?
"Easy" takes 6 months? You've made my point about how much of a mess it is with just that,
Well give us your solution and we'll compare. I won't hold my breath, I've had dozens of these discussion and they always end
Re: (Score:2)
Because it's not running unstable shit so an abstraction that is there is order to stop and start unstable shit (for that purpose of VM) is not required.
Do you really know so little of email, calenders etc that you cannot think of many yourself? Even if stuck in a monoculture that's no excuse for not reading about other developments.
Re: (Score:2)
Well give us your solution and we'll compare. I won't hold my breath, I've had dozens of these discussion and they always end the same way. FOSS nerds picks Exchange to bits, but refuses to offer an alternate for comparison. Your lack of a suggested alternative speaks louder than anything else...
What? Like Kolab, or Zimbra, or OpenExchange, or... yeah there's other things out there. Are they as integrated as Exchange+Outlook? No, but they do offer the same functionality and are a heck of a lot less of a PITA to administer since they actually build on standards to do their work, and allow you to use whatever part you find best (dovecot+postfix vs exim vs etc, postgressql vs mysql vs oracle vs etc, etc) underneath (at least, Kolab and Zimbra).
My own email server running dovecot+postfix was very qu
Re: (Score:2)
Because it's not running unstable shit so an abstraction that is there is order to stop and start unstable shit (for that purpose of VM) is not required.
What the hell are you talking about, VMTools? I've never known VMtools to affect system stability. You might want to report that to VMware if you have supporting data.
Do you really know so little of email, calenders etc that you cannot think of many yourself?
No but clearly you are struggling. I know the competition, they all suck by comparison, but I'm open to a fresh opinion, so fire away...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
VMTools? You really have no clue!
I'm trying to second guess you because you are so vague with your points. If you actually stated your case clearly we wouldn't have these issues
Clearly I'm referring to parts of the MS Exchange suite as unstable
Which parts exactly? I've run a few Exchange servers in my time and never found any unstable. Maybe you were doing something wrong?
and the frequent practice of rebooting VM instances when it gets out of hand
I never had it get out of hand, see above.
, instead of a better designed system where problems are dealt with on a process level. If you knew as much as you pretended you'd be aware of that reason for MS Exchange to be run in a VM instead of the server only needing one OS as with all other MTA, groupware, calendar etc systems.
I won't try and guess what you mean this time. It makes no sense.
Need to run two on the same box - then jails, zones, containers etc do the job for anything apart from MS Exchange.
Still makes no sense.
Need to migrate - then have the config files and data on other box as well instead of wrapping a steaming obficated heap in a VM just so you can move it. The thing is shit and needs a pile of third party things in addition to the suite.
Based on the above I think the problem exists between chair and keyboard. Exchange is the #1 Enterprise Mess
Re: (Score:2)
Been there, now I employ them and actually listen to them unlike you, and what's with the political shit creeping in - are you really so immature or did I get you on a bad day?
Re: (Score:2)
That was indeed "kindergarten level shit" on your part.
Kid, could you please put Daddy back on and he can discuss MS Exchange with me, then we can discuss what an utter pile of shit the 1997 version was compared with today and what still hasn't been fixed today which worked in other software before 1997.
Re: (Score:2)
Seems like an excellent point, but I haven't had the hands-on opportunity to install any of the other solutions, only heard stories. I was thinking the same thing, but wasn't quite sure how to say it, or wasn't brave enough.
Re: (Score:2)
The major competitors are Lotus Notes, of the worst apps ever written (yeah it does DB ok, but messaging and UI is pathetic), Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail etc which I find terrible for business. It's fine for basic individual email, but Enterprise it isn't. And the likes of Zimbra, which has similar cost to Exchange, so why b
Re: (Score:2)
Because it's the only thing that is that mongrel breed. The suite has a pile of stuff, much pretty well abandonware, thrown in with a crap MTA, a calender from the 1990s and a very fragile mail storage system that is an utter bitch to recover from backups - clearly a drill you've never done so you are certainly not fit to look after a machine running it. So a *nix MTA doesn't have a Batt Wombleator or whatever weird checkbox feature MS Exchange has that few use, but who
Re: (Score:2)
You are the only person I have ever seen/heard claim that Exchange is simple to install and administer. Again, I get that you are new here
Sorry to ruin you routine, but I change my username every few years for privacy reasons. I've been here since the beginning.
I've also spent quite a few years administering Exchange since it was created, and without any training I've never had too many problems with it.
I understand that you have an astronomically large SlashID number, but that is no excuse for not knowing about Linux (and Red Hat and their ilk.)
I understand you've made a huge error of judgement with my UID, so I anything else you say can't really be taken on face value.
I also have DECADES of Linux experience (yes more than 20 years), so fill your boots friend, tell me your alternat
Re: (Score:2)
You are full of shit. Off you go now ...
Re: (Score:2)
You are full of shit. Off you go now ...
You could've chosen to respond with your choice of enterprise class messaging and collaboration software and we could've had an mature debate about the pros and cons of each. But instead you choose to resort to childish insults. Good luck with that.
Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
"while radically reworking software that hasn't seen a huge shakeup since 2003."
Oh yeah, because sane people really want THAT! Particularly if the "huge shakeup" is only being done because the software hasn't had a "huge shakeup" since n number of units of time. I'm sure the new Outlook is going to be great!
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
If 2013 Outlook is any indication of the direction it's going, it's going to be awful. Even though the basic Outlook application has really only undergone cosmetic changes, 2013 seems to try harder to gloss over and obfuscate parts of the user interface, which I'm sure will result in a usage metrics which show that nobody uses those features they can't find, so let's eliminate them.
I've made my person peace with Outlook, though, and despite all the things that are awful about it, I find it oddly useful. I dread what I expect will be a masturbatory exercise in visual design which will reduce Outlook to a cell-phone level of feature devolution and touch-friendliness which eliminates its quirky usefulness.
I also really hate the relentless level of user interface churn for the sake of style and visual design in almost everything. I think a measure of incremental user interface improvement can be made, especially as display sizes and technologies change, but too often UIs change because some new trend hits the world of graphic design. It's completely frustrating as a user and most often doesn't really improve usability in any salient way.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
You make a good point. A UI that is slick and wonderful may not be especially good in usability. You need to be able to understand it, you need to be able to find things, and it all needs to work with minimal effort. In that regard, I find that simpler is generally better.
The command line was the ultimate in simplicity, but you couldn't "find" anything --- you had to know the commands (I love the command line, but that isn't the point here). On the other end is multiple ribbons, obscure icons with no text, and multi-layered menus, all with nice bright colors and animation and other things that as often as not, just make it harder to figure out.
But glitz sells, I suppose.
Re: (Score:2)
I also really hate the relentless level of user interface churn for the sake of style and visual design in almost everything.
Relentless? There has been one major UI change in its history, from the original File/Edit/View Menus to the Ribbon in 2007. That was quite jarring I admit, but the ribbon is an improvement (once you got used to it) IMO.
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
My "relentless" comment was meant to be applied generally in the world of computer GUIs, not just Outlook specifically. I would argue that even with Outlook, there were mostly unnecessary changes from 2007->2010 and especially >2013 that were focused on graphic design rather than any kind of usability.
Microsoft specifically I think deserves dings for their obsessive hiding of features and how-things-work across many products, whether it's making file extensions increasingly hard to display, finding the network interfaces to actually change network settings (thankfully you can still use ncpa.cpl from the run menu).
The only two significant features I can think that have been added really didn't require much in terms of UI changes -- multiple Exchange accounts (along with improved RPC-HTTPS support) and larger .PST files.
Re: (Score:2)
Relentless? There has been one major UI change in its history, from the original File/Edit/View Menus to the Ribbon in 2007.
Actually, Outlook was the one Office product that didn't get Ribbon until 2010. (just do a quick google image search for outlook 2007 and you'll see what I mean).
Re: (Score:2)
2007's main window still had the old style menu. But sub items like email, appointments, etc had the ribbon.
2010 was where the main interface was updated to using the ribbon.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If I could go back in time with a bunch of money, one thing I think would have been interesting to do would be to have forked/extended IMAPv4 in the 1990s to include a bunch of extensions for calendaring, contact management and mailbox management and coupled them with a local delivery agent and very lightweight directory on the back end. I think you would have had to address the local mail storage issue as well -- mbox vs. maildir, or do you go full-on database storage.
This would have (mostly) given you a
Re: (Score:2)
I tried the other day this new Edge browser everyone is talking about. I started my Windows 10 VM (which I don't do often) and there it was: An application with an interface designed for cellphones and that barely had any options. It's almost as bad as when Ms forced users to use an UI made for desktops on the PocketPC handhelds.
If this is the future that awaits desktop programs I want to live in the past
Re: (Score:3)
But now your emails can have "likes"!!!
He pointed to the implementation of “likes” and “mentions” in the Outlook clients as examples of changes that he thinks are helpful.
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Interesting)
So.. great. Now this guy can go into the same bin as that dude who pushed systemd. The 'Clusterfuck of Things I didn't want..."
2003 outlook was the last I actually liked. I hung onto it for as long as I possibly could before being forced to upgrade to.. I dunno.. whatever it is out there now. It had a reasonably nice UI, it was quick and did a bunch of stuff I liked. The UI wasn't splattered all over the place and it had nice bevelled buttons and stuff, instead of the flat bollocks that is the current trend. I mean, I have what.. three choices of 'theme' now? White, 'light grey' and 'dark grey' - none of which are much use in allowing me to distinguish between parts of the interface..
So.. now I know who to blame. .
Re: (Score:2)
It is pretty sad when you try to be an anti-systemd weenie when you don't know who [wikipedia.org] Poettering is, and misrepresent the transition to systemd as being "pushed" by a single individual (Don't get me wrong. I'm sure systemd makes your life as a Windows weenie unbearable.)
You made the choice to use garbage software. You have nobody to blame but yourself.
Re: Sigh (Score:2)
I guess we're going down the systemd well here, but in my case, I _decided_ to use Debian, which I don't consider "garbage software", and had no meaningful choice on whether to use systemd.
systemd has wrecked my home server for the apps for which I run it: DAAP music server, MythTV backend, and upnp photo server. Nothing starts properly. Nothing restarts itself. Have to continually intervene by hand, and in some cases I have to do without things that just plain worked before moving to Jessie/systemd.
Systemd
Re: (Score:2)
That is a correct statement actually. It is a much better replacement, as well as being much, much more. It is hilarious that you claim Debian is solid, then go on to claim that it was in fact anything but and it is all systemds fault. I have bad news for you. Systemd works fine, and if your shit isn't working you only have yourself and the Debian maintainers to blame.
Re: Sigh (Score:2)
It's an inadequate replacement in that it's part of the core OS, wants to emulate running legacy SysV init scripts, interprets them incompletely, and gives you no choice but to let it run said scripts and mess up their execution.
That's poor, and inadequate, whatever else you may think are its merits.
Oh wait, there IS another choice! Instead of being a Dad who just wants to get his kids the TV shows they had an hour ago back, I can put on the software developer hat, spend countless hours developing systemd s
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Sigh (Score:2)
Been using and maintaining Debian systems at home and work since potato.
Using apt.
You're apparently not running the same packages as I am. Things that are breaking are coming from the third-party Debian multimedia repo, generally, or have had functionality I was using turned off in Jessie.
Dude, jumping right to the "moron", "lying troll" and "incompetent" bit says a lot more about you than about me. TTYL
THIS (Score:2)
"I have what.. three choices of 'theme' now? White, 'light grey' and 'dark grey' - none of which are much use in allowing me to distinguish between parts of the interface.."
Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2011 (Mac) let you see what is happening. The stupid 2013 themes should be called "blinding white", "white on white", and "white on extremely light taupe". Somebody ought to get fired over that design.
While they're at it, they could make an Android mail app that doesn't threaten me that "IF YOU DO NOT COMPLY I
Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
To this day I cannot fathom why companies would ever roll out a proprietary exchange setup when there are better solutions available, at a significantly lower cost. Solutions that are more reliable, more secure and better supported cross platform.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Like?
And this is the problem. Nobody has ever heard of it. And that's if you can name something that does even a significant fraction of what Exchange does.
Email? Yes. Calendars, appointments, meetings, events, alerts, and schedules? Yep. Contact organizer? Sure. T
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
To be fair, there are FOSS solutions that do these things on a local/group basis. There's lots of groupware that provides most of these functions.
But I do have to admit that Microsoft has the whole stack, if you want to buy into it and pay the price. I don't agree that the individual elements of the stack are anything like best in class, but the integration is definitely there, and it's scalable beyond most FOSS groupware (at least as far as I know the market).
Re: (Score:2)
By "scalable" you mean "If I throw enough cores and RAM at it."
Re: (Score:2)
Easy to say without saying why. Some of them look pretty good.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)
We had Exchange and moved to Google Apps
1. Email
2. Calendars
3. Contacts
4. To-do lists
5. IMs
6. emailcontactscalendar integrations
If we wanted something like Project or TFS or Sharepoint, that'd be a problem, but aside from those ... I'd say we got pretty much everything we wanted, and it works pretty darn well. We also don't have to admin it.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Outlook isn't the fucking problem, exchange and its bastardised architecture is.
No. Outlook is also a fucking problem.
The architecture of the data stores is an ongoing cluster-fuck.
A single-file data file-based data store that's simply allowed to grow into obscene, unstable, performance destroying sizes.
More-over, if you crash one of the files, your chances of actually recovering anything is somewhere between "Pray for a miracle" and "Just start over".
Re: (Score:2)
I would still argue that exchange has even more short comings though.
Re: (Score:2)
True. I'm really not a fan of the crowded interface either.
Something like Thunderbird is much easier to use.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Outlook isn't the fucking problem, exchange and its bastardised architecture is.
No. Outlook is also a fucking problem.
The architecture of the data stores is an ongoing cluster-fuck. A single-file data file-based data store that's simply allowed to grow into obscene, unstable, performance destroying sizes. More-over, if you crash one of the files, your chances of actually recovering anything is somewhere between "Pray for a miracle" and "Just start over".
When used in a corporate environment (with an Exchange server), the Outlook data store does not grow unbounded. Outlook caches a subset of your mailbox for potential offline use and the bulk of your data sits on the Exchange server. When online you can seamlessly search and access all of your past email; when offline you can access what you have cached. The Exchange server uses a fairly robust database which supports transaction logging and replication, and also has several recovery options if needed.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the default setting for Outlook 2013 is to only store one years worth of email. But it does not work the way you describe at all in regards to offline/online. Outlook simply shows you one years worth of email with this setting, period.
This is annoyingly useless for any user who even occasionally needs to look at older emails. To view older mail, you have to change the cache settings, and restart Outlook.The setting is several clicks through account settings which most end users will not be familiar wit
Re: (Score:2)
But it does not work the way you describe at all in regards to offline/online. Outlook simply shows you one years worth of email with this setting, period.
This is annoyingly useless for any user who even occasionally needs to look at older emails. To view older mail, you have to change the cache settings [...]
I don't experience this. When looking at the mail items in a folder (or a set of search results), you should see a link that reads "There are more items in this folder on the server Click here to to view more on Microsoft Exchange". A single click should redirect your search to the Exchange server and give you results across your entire email history. Microsoft knowledge base article describing this [microsoft.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Outlook does what I want it to do, which is to just work, except in one area. I never get decent results when searching email if the email in question is encrypted, and encrypted email is pretty common these days...
That's probably because most regulations-compliant encrypted mail solutions don't actually send you the body of the message, they send you a message with an html file or a link to an encrypted webpage where the message lives.
Re: (Score:3)
That's debatable. I'm forced to use the latest Outlook Web Access client at work, and it is an unmitigated clusterfuck. gMail and its associated tools have really set that bar high.
Re: (Score:2)
Outlook isn't the fucking problem, exchange and its bastardised architecture is.
To this day I cannot fathom why companies would ever roll out a proprietary exchange setup when there are better solutions available, at a significantly lower cost. Solutions that are more reliable, more secure and better supported cross platform.
I Know??! It is terrible, expensive, and requires lots of proprietary in house help to keep it up.
Now what if there was some other way where this couldn't be an issue? Like a bill. You pay a bill and someone outside on the internet magically manages it so you do not have to think about Exchange or even domains! You just pay online at some site and sign up for an email address and Outlook just works and you can save money by firing your IT team to boot. It's almost like someone wants it to be this way?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd argue that Microsoft wants it that way. I've installed and run Exchange since 2000 and by 2010 Microsoft mostly hit the sweet spot in terms of useful management interface and pretty damn good reliability and performance, especially for the large feature set it employed.
But in 2010, they killed off the GUI management for a web interface that maybe does half of what even small organizations need in terms of admin, shunting the rest of their management intrerface to the overly verbose and Byzantine PowerS
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Zimbra client (without the server) does not seem all that impressive to me. My wife switched from Thunderbird to Zimbra because Thunderbird just isn't very good anymore, but the improvement was smaller than we hoped.
Admittedly that is with a plain IMAP server, not with Zimbra server, but surely the UI doesn't change much just because you use a real Zimbra server.
Re: (Score:2)
And...why would you want to do that? (Score:5, Insightful)
>> keeping traditional Outlook users (and IT administrators) happy while radically reworking software that hasn't seen a huge shakeup since 2003
And...why would you want to do that? Microsoft Office has basically remained unchanged since the late 1990s and it's still raking in money. Outlook "competitors" like Thunderbird are still dropping like flies and you want to piss off your huge customer base to...what exactly? Follow Marissa down the tech drain?
Re: (Score:3)
A bunch of overpaid UX designers have to justify their employment.
And now we know... (Score:2)
And -now- we know who is responsible for the slow, downward spiral of what Outlook has turned into since the 2003 client. It's horrible! I regret ever upgrading to 16 from '07. But it's the "standard" in the industry, it's what everyone uses, so we've -got- to upgrade!
Blah!
It's good to know just whose responsible for this train wreck.
Grr!
Re:And now we know... (Score:4, Insightful)
yeah really.. I've never seen such a slow GUI on an MS product before. Whatever GUI widget they're grafting over win32 runs like a dog even on 4ghz cpus and powerful gpus.
1. Scrolling is choppy an interactions have visible latency.
2. There's too much white space.
3. The layout is nearly impossible to memorize. What's worse is that it's obviously a kludge in progress: some of the dialogs that haven't been grafted yet hark back to the win32/mfc days, and ironically, they're still nice and quick.
I don't want my desktop applications to behave like tablet apps. I want full functionality, no wasted space, and lightning fast interfaces. There's no excuse for not having that last one on modern machines.
I've half considered moving (back) to pegasus mail for personal use on windows.
http://www.pmail.com/ [pmail.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I have very little knowledge about the inner working of Exchange, but I can second the issues with slowness and interface lag. I am amazed at the difference between the Outlook client and just opening the email page in chrome. When I open it in the browser everything is lightning fast, almost ludicrously so. Emails load in the preview page instantly and scrolling has zero delay, but in their actual client it takes an unbearable amount of time to load.
Re: (Score:2)
Really? Ok
Here's outlook 2003.
http://www.computerfix.org/for... [computerfix.org]
Here's outlook 2016.
http://windowsitpro.com/site-f... [windowsitpro.com]
Minus the luna color scheme, I much prefer 2003.
1. I don't know what to tell you, but scrolling is laggy and choppy compared with 2003. This affects all the 2013/2016 office applications.
2. The pics above show differently.
3. The pics above show differently.
I am talking about the real client application, not OWA.
Re: (Score:2)
I hadn't seen the 2013 version until now. That fucking interface is vomit inducing.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's outlook 2016.
http://windowsitpro.com/site-f... [windowsitpro.com]
Geez, what a mess.
Give me GNUS any day :)
Re: (Score:2)
I am not surprised. All MS so called UX design from 2013 and forward have been progressively worse. I hate the Office 2013 design. I could tolerate the 2010 because it at least had colors. Now it is just plain boring and hard to use because there is no colors and huge buttons that doesn't look like buttons.
Re: (Score:2)
Shoot!
I'll take Outlook 2016 over that malware infested .PST limit or lose 10 years of data to a screaming VP of that 2003 client ANY DAY! ... with the annoying exception of iCAL being no longer supported :-(
Outlook's search (Score:4, Informative)
The biggest problem with Outlook isn't the UI, it's that it stinks at search. It takes FOREVER to search all your folders if you have any significant amount of email, and what it does find is often not relevant.
I for one am thankful that my company has moved to GMail for business.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If only 5 GB were a large email store!
Yes, Instant Search helps somewhat, but it doesn't make the results any more relevant.
Re:Outlook's search (Score:4, Insightful)
Search in Outlook is a complete joke. It sometimes works if you search for just one word, but as soon as I put two words in, I get so many results that it could just as well show the entire inbox.
Re: (Score:2)
I've always used X1. Unbelievably fast searching hundreds of thousands of emails. The new UI in recent years is utter shit but the copy I have from about 2009 still works great.
Re: (Score:2)
THIS!
I mean, you'd think they could figure out a way to, you know... add and index to your database file (PST)...
In addition to that, another annoyance is the plugin integration with OWA (or whatever they are calling it these days... outlook on the web or something?). At the very least, this is confusing since Bing maps is one of the default OWA plugins and a lot of sigs contain address info... so you get this ribbon at the top of your e-mail asking you if you want to look up the address on Bing Maps, but t
All latest changes are productivity killers (Score:5, Insightful)
At best everything is harder to see (I mean, what's up with greyed out backgrounds for text boxes in Excel that used to be white? Sure it "looks nicer" but now you have to just "know" you can type there...)
Moving strongly into the Windows 10 way of doing things, pretty much just means everything you want to do is an extra click or two away... and not obviously labeled.
As far as Outlook in particular, it acts differently than all other apps for mousing over the minimize/maximize/close buttons - they don't highlight when the window doesn't have focus. If you have the non-gaudy color scheme, that makes it really hard to see.
Everything in general is harder to see. Come on, this is a "work" app, it is not supposed to be subtle. I doubt anyone is using Outlook because they like the way it looks!
I guess Microsoft is trying to catch up with Apple in skipping the "affordance" and "signifiers" steps of good design.
Re:All latest changes are productivity killers (Score:4, Informative)
I'll add more disagreements with Outlook that I've been complaining about since Mac Outlook 2011
1) Mac versions *still* can't send in future (i.e., I know someone's in a meeting, I want them to see my mail pop up right as they get back to their desk 30m later without ... waiting) Windows Outlook has this, Mac doesn't.
2) Just the other day my location bar dropdown stopped working (was curiously right after an update, and yes, I have rebooted since). This just sucks - I want my old meeting rooms and webex fixed URLs handy when I'm booking meetings!
3) Still no ability (without a hack) to put bulleted lists in email replies. Seriously?!?
4) No ability to email my calendar availability (again, Win Outlook can do it, Mac OL can't)
5) Want to search multiple folders? Needs a 2nd click (i.e., I want to find an email either in my send or inbox, but that takes an extra 2 clicks). In Windows, you can default your search preferences.
Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
FTA:
He pointed to the implementation of âoelikesâ and âoementionsâ in the Outlook clients as examples of changes that he thinks are helpful.
In a sane world, that alone would disqualify him for the position.
groove "back" for email? (Score:3)
They never understood email. And the article is mostly about streamlining the UI (Which was enormously cluttered; which idiot had the idea you need to have html mark-up in emails anyway? No wonder...)
Subsequent innovations, like the recent change to use MAPI over HTTP as the default connectivity protocol
WTF?
Yes, that explains everything. They still don't understand email.
So, in other words... (Score:2)
...keeping traditional Outlook users (and IT administrators) happy...
So, in other words, Outlook is going to continue to suck.
Pfffft! (Score:2)
As Users (and Representatives of Other Users)... (Score:2)
...we need to provide some useful guidance to Microsoft.
My problem is that like all "one-size-fits-all" products, Outlook is equally unusable by virtually anyone who tries to use it.
To me, the first question: Is Outlook an eMail client, or is it a Personal Information Manager? I can use Gmail if all I want is to send/receive/categorize mail. But, what I want is an integrated PIM: My eMail, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks, all together in one common place, and integrated with each other. Why, for example,
Re: (Score:3)
So M$ missed the boat on search and social media. They really ought to put their big brains on What's Next in computing, not "re-inventing" one of their dinosaur products.
So the one thing that they didn't miss the boat on (integrated mail/calendaring platform) and you just dismiss it a dinosaur product. And while they might have been late to the search market, they are the second biggest player. It's still respectable to come second the mighty Google.
But the strangest notion that you have is that you think that a company can only work on one product at once. They can easily have one department working on updating Outlook while still researching new markets and finding new wa
Re: (Score:2)
You have provided evidence that most people don't know how to change their default search engine, not that a lot of people like Bing.
Re: (Score:2)
Or it just shows that having the default browser on the dominant OS doesn't mean as much as you think it did. People are used to using the term google as a verb, so it is difficult to dislodge that mindset.
Microsoft isn't going to get humiliated because they didn't meet your expectations. They should be as humiliated as Linux is having such a tiny segment of the desktop market when it is the $free option - and I doubt that this is a position that you would take.