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."

Comments

Predictable and a good thing.

[digitect]

This seems a logical step given several factors:

• Outlook Express is a completely different code base than Outlook. Twice as much to maintain means twice as many bugs.
• No more free ride. As Linux (and other Free OSs ;) begin to become competitive, the scrappy, free software on the perimeter of the main encampment is the obvious first target to eliminate to save money and cut losses.
• Plenty of people are hooked into Outlook Express that a forced migration at this point will bring plenty of profit. At least more than none, although probably the target audience already has MS Office, but maybe not all.
• In moving to some global control / central services scheme (.net, Longhorn, whatever) there's no point in trying to migrate some basic client package.

I was an OE user for rather a long while and it had always seemed a bit nicer interface than Outlook proper. In maybe three years, I never had a data failure and it was quite reliable. Obviously the security angle was, er, non-existent (anti-secure perhaps) but it felt fast and mostly did what I told it.

But I'm an Evolution user now, so OE won't be missed. Better for all of us, if you ask me.

Re:What?

[AstroDrabb]

Not only IE and now OE, but in their next version of their OS they are "integrating" Windows Media Player. It will no longer be a stand alone app. Boy am I glad the US justice system knows how to stop monopolies from ruining captialism.

Re:Read between the lines

[yerricde]

Of course, to remove HTML mail would require a level of effort such that a proper check on spam would be easier to implement.

Most Outlook Express clients that are configured to send HTML are configured to send both text/plain and text/html, with reasonably valid tags. Most Outlook Express users also spell at least half Just flag as "junk" any message 1. that has text/html but no inline text/plain, 2. whose inline text/html content does not substantially match its text/plain content, 3. whose text/html content has a large number of comments or unknown elements, or 4. that, after deleting words not valid in any language the intended recipient speaks, consist primarily of a link whose content is an image to be retrieved via HTTP. These quick checks seem to work well as a front line of defense against junk e-mail, and SpamAssassin uses variants on them.

Web-based e-mail isn't for everyone

[ziegast]

They think webmail is going to be more popular than imap, or pop3 mail boxes.

If Microsoft lets its market share for desktop-based e-mail clients slip, it could be short-sighted.

I use web-based mail at work (iPlanet/SIMS) and web-based mail (Yahoo) at home as my primary mail-reader. I have broadband in both locations and the responsiveness of web-based e-mail conpared to desktop e-mail clients is negligible.

My work-at-home CEO has satellite at home. He can't use the web-based product because the interactive sluggishness from delay and packet loss would kill his productivity. SSH-tunneled POP works great for him because his local e-mail client (Outlook) downloads new e-mail in the background and sends messages out in the background while he is composing/reading mail quickly in the foreground.

When I administered e-mail for a dialup ISP, the primary method our users preferred to access their e-mail was POP to Outlook Express or Netscape Messenger. It is painfully slow to browse through e-mail over a dialup connection. There are still millions of dialup users out there. They are the majority of users on the Internet.

If people use wireless devices in the future, their experience will be more similar to dialup/satellite than broadband, and they'll demand a product that isn't web-based-only. Some of the ideas brought to light by Central or similar technologies could satisfy both broadband/fixed and narrowband/mobile users.

Microsoft makes an excellent user interface for e-mail. They're good at that. Their enterprise/corporate customers may continue to pay for it. Other products like M2, Evolution, and Mozilla will help fill the consumer niche if they open it up. If it weren't for Microsoft's early monopoly bundling tactics vs Netscape Navigator (founded on a "beta/intro is free, production version costs money" business model), we might not have nor expect free browser and e-mail software. We're spoiled. If it weren't for security or playform supportissues, more of us Slashdotters might use Outlook Express.

-ez

PS: I lied. My primary mail reader is MH.

Re:they want to focus on webmail...

[EvanED]

The real downside to webmail for me is (are you ready for this?) it's on the web. I keep a backlog of essentially every email I recieve. I have things burnt onto CD from over 4 years ago, which is when I first had a non-webmail, non-AOL account. Unless webmail places start giving insanely larger starage spaces (say, 50 megs instead of 5) and/or offer a very easy download solution, they are worthless for general use. Add to that the fact that you have to be online (okay, I have cable, so that's not a real issue) with a good connection to read, and even with a good connection it would take longer to move things between folders, read past messages, search, etc. and webmail starts to look very unappealing. The only benefit for power users at least is that you would have all your messages whereever you go.