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Microsoft Stops Development Of Outlook Express
Jman314 writes "According to a ZDNet story, Microsoft will cease development of their Outlook Express email client. "The technology doesn't go away, but no new work is being done. It is consumer email in an early iteration, and our investment in the consumer space is now focused around Hotmail and MSN. That's where we're putting the emphasis in terms of new investment and new development work." says Dan Leach, lead product manager for Microsoft's information worker product management group. Microsoft's alternatives include, not surprisingly, the full version of Outlook."
"The attrociously insecure program won't go away, but no new work is being done. It was our best attempt at writing a simple email client in an early iteration, and our investment in the consumer space is now focused around agents that will allow us to more effectively execute our SPAM campaign and strengthen our monopoly: Hotmail and MSN. That's where we're putting the emphasis in terms of new investment, development work, and worm targets that will give your IT guy an incredible head ache."
Cool - so now Evolution can play catch-up for the next few years....
Oh, ok... so what you're saying is we no longer have outlook express... it's now part of the OS and we can't de-couple them... it's an integral part of the OS... honest your honor!
Seriously... They're doing with outlook express, what they did with Internet Explorer... except this time, they are bundling outlook functionality with their Web business, instead of their OS... Same shit different pile...
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Q.
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Great, just what I need, MORE M$ proprietary mail headers, HTTP extensions, and HTML tags.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
So Outlook express will go away. I'm not going to shed many tears over it.
Still, how long will it take before the users who download Outlook Express stop hunting around on the net and installing it? I still have people reaching around in their directory (or desk drawer) of important stuff installing horribly old versions of Netscape 4.x (where x is a very small number) so they can use it's email reader.
Most of the users are bound to the one product they chose when they REALLY NEEDED it to work. During that crisis period, they put in the time and effort to get THAT product to work, and that's the extent of their software understanding. Microsoft may try to wash it's hands of Outlook Express, but I imagine a day (ten years from now)
Hey, could you look at my home computer? It seems I have an email problem.
Really? I thought that email was totally autoconfiguring on your system!
Yea, but for some reason, Outlook Express, says it can't connect to my Internet.
Arrrggghhh....
Take away their free email program and they'll be FORCED to buy our commercial products! Ha!
Quick Smithers, find the Mozilla development team and kill them all!
First they're cancelling IE, and now OE.
It's like that memo making security "job #1" was real or something...
Definately. As long as whoever runs the server is trustworthy. Of course Micrososft is pretty good in that regard -
Oh wait, never mind.
Microsoft will find new ways to make IT staffers suffer. Suffer ? Its job creation dude. Rock on
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
Oh yeah! Sounds great! Let's see, umm... me@hotmail.com. Nope, hmm. me2@hotmail.com. MMMh. me2dood@hotmail.com. Eh! is anything available!? meetooooyoudamnpigbilly@hotmail.com. ARRGGHH how can that be taken! OK try this: me_bork_bork_bork_boogliachoo129@hotmail.com ... Finally. OK, login here, WHAT? spam already?
Damn those pesky terrorists
In a related note, my email address is hotmail, so it was kind of a joke. But I could still keep my 1337ness by saying I am bringing them down from the inside.
... the Microsoft Support Line rings off the hook, "I read you are discontinuing Outlook Express, how am I going to surf the web now!?????"
Bait and Switch
When you wake up, please be so kind and let us know what happened by the end of your dream.
A bright sun shone above the horizon. Songbirds lilted sweetly in lush green trees, bunnies danced across the meadow, and all disease came to an end. A Microsoft spokesperson said in a press conference - "You know folks, from now on I think everything is gonna be ok."
My friend Steve Cochran just released a new free utility called OE Backup. It will backup everything in OE, including multiple Identities, mail folders, newsgroups, address book and customized Identity settings.
;-)
It's incredibly easy to use as well, although I hate Windows and tell Steve this all the time. But, I guess that's why he has a job and I'm just a dirty Linux hippie
Anyway, youu can back up only selected items, such as rules, much like my Partial Backup procedure, but without having to edit the registry. This is a great tool, and it's free. Manually doing backups is so '90s!
http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
"So while I would shed a tear over Outlook Express going away, truth is, a rat's ass I do not give."
Amen!
Except I have a bad feeling I will have to support it for many, many years to come....
*bangs head on wall*!
realityshunt
Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate.
Evolution ??
says Dan Leach, lead product manager for Microsoft's information worker product management group
Coincidence? I think not. Ok, so there's spelling, but since when have I cared about that?
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Crudely Drawn Games
Stocks in all major Antivirus vendors were down on the news.
CEO's of major Antivirus vendors were unanimous in advising their shareholders that "there's nothing to worry about - there are plenty of other Microsoft products out there..."
... to a few people at work.
--COO shrugged... Eudora
--CEO shrugged... Eudora
--CTO shrugged... Eudora
--Project Manager #1 Shuddered... (Sky is falling!!!)
--Project Manager #2 shrugged... (But he shrugs at everything, so not sure what it means.)
--IT guys #1 and #2... "Out what? Servers are up, everything running fine. Nothing is Out."
Basically, it seems to be a big, "Yeah. So?"
Tools -> Message Rules -> Mail -> New -> "Where The Message is from the specified account" -> "Move it to the specified folder" ..
Damn! You learned me sumthin' new. I thought "Where The Message is from the specified account" referred to the sender's address (as in "From:").
Well, I think it will be called "MSN Explorer"!
.NET will function perfectly with new MS Network servers. ... (more marketing)
... I doubt that it will succeed, since we have so great governments around the world, not allowing this?!?!
1. Microsoft denies that the Internet is of interest of the average user.
2. Microsoft "creates" Internet Explorer to compete with Netscape.
3. Microsoft buys the popular Hotmail among other popular portals on the Internet.
4. Microsoft extends its "MSN" to the Internet (and television).
5. Microsoft develops MSN Explorer.
* 6. Microsoft stops development of IE and Outlook.
7. Microsoft
8. Microsoft Windows Bloat2005 is delivered without TCP/IP. You can now login to the MS Network without the use of Internet.
9.
10. Microsoft users have forgotten that there was something called "The Internet". "I just login to the MS Network, its easier to use, like I read/saw somewhere", a local user said, "I hope we will implement it at our work, because of communcation with my home, telephone is sooo old-fashioned".
That is their strategy
(yes this can be compared with sex)
They'll store the data on their servers. It will always be accessible (so long as you pay your licensing fees like a good little serf), and you don't have to worry about hard drive crashes or data loss (...) So now you can't switch to some dirty pirate-OS like Linux without forfeiting all of your data.
Sounds like they are moving to an Everquest business model.
Profit: Sell your MSN-account on ebay once you have accumulated enough spam mail to advance to level 20.
"IMAP is just not a very rich protocol," Steve Conn, Exchange Server product manager, told ZDNet Australia during the company's Tech Ed conference. "The great majority of people used Outlook Express because they weren't on a LAN environment, and Outlook was just too fat for them."
In other words, Microsoft saw OE as their IMAP client, and so by dropping OE, they are also abandoning the IMAP mail protocol. In spite of what Mr Conn says, IMAP is a very rich protocol: it allows you to maintain multiple mail folders on the server, it allows you to keep your mail client configuration on the server, and in principle it allows you to store arbitrary files on the server.
But it's not as rich as, let's say, MAPI.. And by "rich" I mean that IMAP isn't bloated, and everyone can write clients that use it! There are no proprietary secret extensions! That sucks!
SCO employee? Check out the bounty