More On Kapor's Attempt To Best Outlook 229
An anonymous reader writes "There's a story on the Boston Globe's Digital MASS section about Mitch Kapor , the guy who created Lotus 1-2-3. He will reportedly spend about $5 mil to create something competing with MS Outlook. More of the story here." We mentioned this a few months ago as well, and it sounds like any software release is still some time off.
Mitch Kapor (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure it burned the eyes out of your skull to use it, but it was a combination of Outlook, HTML, PGP, IMAP, and NNTP done back in the 1980s. If he can make that sort of leap again, it will be something to reckon with.
He's not the only one... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to use Linux in an office environment, a groupware solution is a must-have. The more people who are working on this subject, the better, in my opinion....
The problem is not lack of a groupware client (Score:4, Insightful)
But, there is NOTHING like Exchange out there in the free software world. Corporate users need group calendaring most of all. I realize that OpenLDAP lets us trade contact info, but the critical thing is group calendaring (which includes task lists). Oh, and the group calendaring has to interoperate with Outlook so that Outlook and non-Outlook users can trade meeting invitations. I think Mr. Kapor should spend a little bit of money on enhancing Evolution and spend the rest on building a great Exchange-killer instead.
On a side note... it would take very little effort to get Evolution to be able to parse winmail.dat attachments, so that Evolution and Outlook clients could do peer-to-peer exchanges of meetings and tasks. That would be a fantastic step. They can already trade contacts with no problems. Trading calendaring info should be not much more difficult and it would be a tremendous help to letting Evolution sneak into offices.
A prediction (Score:3, Insightful)
You've got flaming mail (a cross-platform virus) (Score:2, Insightful)
Rarely mentioned very useful Outlook items (Score:4, Insightful)
I have tried a few other clients but none had the all-around capability that Outlook has. I often wonder if the folks that diss Outlook here have used it much. I have never had a virus problem, although I had a few close calls that my virus scanner caught. I have had one great debacle when I was fooling around with the pst file about 3 versions ago. It was my fault and it cause me a lot of pain.
Outlook is much more that just an email client with calendar and contact manager.
For a time I used Outlook as my desktop. You can launch all your applications from Outlook if you choose to. It works quite effectively. It just turned out to be a little too boring, not enough visual appeal after a number of months. However if you want a sparse no-nonsense desktop Outlook has it.
Another of the seldom mentioned capabilities of Outlook are the automatic journaling of Office applications and email activity by name date and time. I just wish that could be extended to any application. You can manually journal anything. Outlook can provide journaling reports in multiple formats. This is a lifesaver for me when I do my monthly billing.
Outlook has alarms for arbitrary uses. It has rules that can automate various filtering and file location tasks.
Other applications may have some of these maybe even most of these. I don't know of any application that has them all.
I looked at Evolution. It looks like an Outlook knock-off. Certainly that is somewhat flattering to Outlook's designers. Kapor's effort also looks similar. I wish him luck and ask that he not forget the journaling capability. It would really be great if any application could be registered with the software and have its activity automatically journalized.
Did I mention easy synchronization with PDA devices? Or, that it can also use "stationery." I haven't personally found a use for this, However, I have received a few messages on "stationery." That's how I learned that it existed.
In summary, Outlook is useful, robust, very flexible and capable, and pretty secure (a la pgp) if configured as recommended for security and backed by a virus scanner. I depend on it.
Re:Mitch Kapor (Score:3, Insightful)
Cloning Outlook doesn't hurt microsoft. (Score:4, Insightful)
A couple of weeks ago my boss asked me to find a replacement for the calendar server in Exchange, one which would work with... Outlook.
Nowhere to be found. I can replace the mail-part very easy (we're already doing that for years), the addressbook is nearly finished now (LDAP rules/sucks
And as long as you can't replace all what an Exchange server does, you won't have a chance in hell to replace Outlook.
If it's good, it *will* work! (Score:1, Insightful)
- Mozilla offered an easy migration path, i.e. all his mail from Outlook Express was converted.
- Mozilla Mail was easy to use and offered more features.
I have no doubt that this program will make it out (though I'm sure Mitch will not be in a rush--he'll release it when it's ready) and it will be successful because it'll be a lot more than just a plain e-mail, news and scheduling system. It's going to be great.<aol>I fully agree with the poster who said Pine has better usability than Outlook</aol>
Not Outlook killer, Exchange killer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Already done... (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of the features I like are unique to Groupwise, but on the whole it's everything bad about Exchange wrapped into a different propritary license. The same can be said for Lotus Notes, it has its nice features and it's not M$, but you still have proprietary incompatible software as your mail client.
Re:Cloning Outlook doesn't hurt microsoft. (Score:4, Insightful)
Precisely! That's why Chandler aims to remove the need for groupware servers altogether, by using P2P style distribution.
Re:Not Outlook killer, Exchange killer (Score:1, Insightful)
The point you seem to be missing is that most people Do Not Want to change their email client, and will resist such a change.
If *any* proposed replacement for the Outlook/Express system doesn't work with the existing installed base of Outlook clients, the people running those clients won't accept the new system. It's too much work to retrain with no perceieved benefits other than lost time.
The cost of people is always more important than the cost of things. People are more expensive, and employers don't want to waste their time.
I switched (was: Re:It's not going to work.) (Score:1, Insightful)
And that's not just me. It _is_ happening, because people get more and more annoyed from the licensing practices of Microsoft, the bugs, the security/virus problems you face with Microsoft software (yes, _all_ of my friends got infected with Win32.Klez last year) and the bugging they receive from the software. Even people new to computing start saying "What's that damn paper clip on the right bottom of my screen!?".
I'm still using Windows w/ Outlook, but if Outlook gets worse (or alternative solutions get better) I'll use them. It's just that easy.