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Mozilla Lightning to Challenge Outlook
MS IE Bug Finder writes "Although Microsoft is dismissing Mozilla Lightning, the article indicates the combination of Thunderbird (mail) with Sunbird (calendaring) should be a worthy opponent against Outlook by the middle of the new year." Reader EvilStein adds a link to the Lightning Q&A.
I would be willing to use any Open Source client but the Outlook server won't allow any other client to connect to it other than MS Outlook. Any hints on how to trick the thing to let me use other clients.
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If you feel like it, mail the url, and where ya came from to pater@slashdot.org.
Why has this taken so long? We've been suffering for a long time.
They should've called the project SHAZAM!
Why do you need a calendar, I was under the impression Outlook was used 99% of the time as a mail client.. which Thunderbird already beats it at..
So am I missing something here or is this just more advertising for the Mozilla guys?
I like muppets.
Sorry, but this time Microsoft wins. Sunbird is not even a complete piece of software. Last time I used it, not all the menu buttons even did anything. (This was a known problem.) I imagine on a Windows system, where one app crashing can bring down the system, it is a lot more annoying.
I hate Microsoft Windows as much as the next guy, but Outlook has them beat. If only it worked on Linux.
Le français vous intéresse?
Think about this:
...
- Security
- Remote image blocking
- No IE core
- RSS reader
-
Conclusion: Thunderbird rocks.
Check populicio.us
This doesn't stand a chance to beat Outlook. Outlook is a great but buggy program. Most offices these days depend on the features it has.
It will compete with Outlook express though.
If it is readily compatible with sync apps for a handheld, etc, I will surely give it a try. However, it still needs the ability to sync wirelessly/over the internet/etc like exchange server can, in order to have a chance on a large scale.
Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
Thunderbird also needs more robust address handling, and the ability to sync with palm and other handhelds before it can adequately compete with Outlook.
They should just give up?
.2. Could you at least wait until v1.0 before you declare it finished?
Sheesh, they're only on like version
I wouldn't dismiss it so quickly if I were Microsoft. With the code for connecting to Microsoft's exchange servers GPL'd from Novell's Evolution, that could (possibly) be integrated into Lightning and Lightning would also be free rather than part of a very expensive office suite. While Lightning isn't here yet, if it can duplicate enough of Outlook's functionality, a lot of people might switch to it to avoid the high cost and security holes. It's a much easier sell than Firefox, in my opinion, because Outlook costs money while Internet Explorer doesn't.
Worry Microsoft! WORRY!
I hope it works better than the old netscape suite of products. Man was that a nightmare...
I use Outlook because it does have an integrated calendar and there are decent spam plugins but it is a bloated, slow app.
So when people get bored of calling it Lightning, what will the Mozilla team rename it to?
Firebird became Firefox... Will Lightning become Thunder?
"The amount of intelligence on this planet is a constant. The population is growing." -Cole's Axiom
Although there is the MAPI protocol for communication with Exchange, it appears that you generally need a connector on the client side for non-Outlook clients. That's convenient for the user and administrator, and a strike against third-party email clients currently.
The number one thing preventing a Mozilla e-mail client from doing what it's web client is doing is its inability to interface with an Exchange server. Like it or not, Exchange is the standard in most workplaces these days and that isn't likely to change any time soon for a variety of good reasons. I can use Firefox at work, I can't use Thunderbird.
... then perhaps numerous small, semi-autonomous departments will be able to pull it into their part of the enterprise without too much disruption.
Is it going to be able to do that? That would be a great way of gaining a toehold. For instance my previous company (before I joined a rather prominent big-ass software company) would have really benefitted from being able to put a few desktops onto Linux with good Exchange integration - RPC connections, y'know. server-based rules and all that jazz.
Toehold. that's all it would have taken. As it is, my former company has one linux user. there could have been several.
Basically, any non accounting staff and non contract-tied staff could have benefitted, which would have been an important toehold/testbed for Free software (note capital) in our organisation. That would have been maybe 15-20% of our desks.
Toehold!
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
We're just in the process of migrating most of our users from Outlook to Thunderbird and I have to say, natively being able to read the MS-TNEF format (i.e. anything in Outlook Rich-Text Format) would do a lot to help here. Someone write an extension, or even better something server-side for Exim!
And yes, I know that you can get convertors which take the winmail.dat file and sort it for you, but that's not the best solution.
I am what most people would consider a highly trained technical professional. Unlike most people who spout off at this site, I have the certificates to prove this, and furthermore they're issued by the biggest software company in existence.
I know how to tell facts from marketing fluff. Now, here are the facts as they're found by SEVERAL INDEPENDENT RESEARCH INSTITUTES:
Expenses for file-server workloads under Windows, compared to LinuxOS:
They compared Microsofts IIS to the Linux 7.0 webserver. For Windows, the cost was only:
Application development and support costs for Windows compared to an opensores solution like J2EE:
A full Windows installation, compared to installing Linux, on an Enterprise Server boxen:
Compared to the best known opensores webserver "Red Hat", Microsoft IIS:
These are hard numbers and 100% FACTS! There are several more where these came from.
Who do you think we professionals trust more?
Reliable companies with tried and tested products, or that bedroom coder Thorwaldes who publicly admits that he is in fact A HACKER???
--
Copyright (c) 2004 Mike Bouma, MCSE, MCDST, MS Office Specialist, widely respected Amigan, Amiga community representative
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU
Free Documentation License".
Copyright (c) 2006 Mike Bouma, MCSE, MCDST, MS Office Specialist, widely respected Amigan
I know there are obviously a good deal of exploits out there that take advantage of IE through outlook by using HTML in an email that makes a call to the IE engine and then exploits IE. Can this still occur even if you are not using Outlook but using IE as your native browser or even if you are not using IE but have IE on your OS because it is native and ingrained within windows. I think even though it may not be used as the default browser, emails that contain HTML that needs to call upon the IE engine will still do it and therefore still run the exploit? I guess the main question is do you have to totally uninstall IE or just not use Microslop to stop this from occurring?
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
Looks like Thunderbird is going after the same people as Novell's Evolution. Maybe this will serve as the incentive for Novel release a Windows version soon.
But the thing that makes the Microsoft offering so strong is not Outlook by itself, but the combination of Outlook and Exchange Server.
You could cobble together an IMAP server and some other OSS pieces and approximate the Outlook/Exchange experience, but since they are not all seamlessly integrated, you would have an administrative nightmare if you ever migrated to another server, found a security hole in one of the pieces, or had to change any piece in any way.
Make Thunderbird and Sunbird (and something that intelligently managed tasks, workflow, and sticky notes) 100% compatible with Exchange. THAT would be an Outlook killer. Though all MS would have to do is break it in the next patch.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
Why do you need a calendar, I was under the impression Outlook was used 99% of the time as a mail client.
My main clients are architects. They are all heavily dependant on Outlook as their primary project management tool -- email, calendar, etc.
I tried to convince them that Outlook is the world's worst spreader of viral mayhem. They agreed in principle, but were unwilling to give up Outlook. Reason: they're already heavily invested in knowing and using Outlook -- switching would be too much work, too disruptive.
Grr.
- kgj
-kgj
If it doesn't allow users to share contacts then it's no competition. My customers could care less about shared calendaring. What people need is an alternative to the simple shared contact database that Exchange provides.
There are three components to the holy grail of exchange destroyers:
1. Shared mail store
2. Shared calendaring
3. Shared contacts.
I've got 1 and 2 covered (Courier IMAP and Mozilla calendar with WebDAV backend). There is still no uniform contact database backend... and don't start talking LDAP. LDAP only allows me to read from a directory. People have to be able to add/delete/change records and share entire directories just like in Exchange. *AND* it has to be a cross-platform accessible format so that the I can write a plug-in for any interface (web, mozilla, etc). I was thinking something similar to WebDAV that I use for calendars.
People need their personal contact database and shared db's in their organization to be accessible from anywhere, anytime. I can't believe MS is the only player in this court. Groupwise doesn't count because it's still sucks. Opengroupware and it's clones only work with outlook. The point is to get away entirely from the crushing thumb of MS.
rant over.
Mozilla's wiki has gotten too much traffic:
Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties, and cannot contact the database server.
Too many connections
Outlook is more than simply mail + calendar. I definitely use it for synching (notes, contacts, tasks, calendar, mail) with a PPC and my brother for synching with the Palm. Furthermore, I have shared calendars on Sharepoint that would need to be transferred.
Also, with the new desktop search engines out there, the slower searching of email is not really an issue. I'm using Copernic and it has awesome integration with Outlook (Google's Desktop search has decent integration and MSN's Toolbar Suite has a good integration). So, you can see all the major desktop search tools work with Outlook and none with Thunderbird.
P.S. I've used Thunderbird - it's like an Outlook XP clone for the most part (with RSS feeds thrown in for whatever reason).
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
than anything else so far. Office is their bread and butter.
i saw the baby, and the baby looked at me
I'd love to see an integration between some kind of OneNote (or WebNote [bright color warning - shield your eyes]) replacement instead of a calendar.
.xpi) of an app like that?
Free-form notes, easily sortable and searchable would be a killer app, not another dumb calendar. Maybe a calendar tied in with THAT would make it the ultimate?
Is there any thought (or already some kind of
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
I know there are several extensions for it, but I assume there is some reasoning behind not having a built-in option. What is that reasoning?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I should know. My company runs an Exchange mail server, and I use Thunderbird everyday as my mail client. I get hundreds of messages a day, and Thunderbird is substantially superior to Outlook.
:( I'd love it if I could use Sunbird instead.
I still have to use Outlook for my calendar, though
How do I set up Thunderbird to run with Exchange, you ask? Simple. Just go into server settings and set your IMAP server name to "exchange", along with your Exchange username. Yes, it's THAT easy!
This space left intentionally blank.
Ditto. I've been using Calendar for the past year+. I just got a PocketPC and I'm hoping someone will bust through with some sync software so I don't have to switch to Outlook.
:)
If they get a sync feature running, I'll try it in alpha testing. Heck, I might even file bug reports.
If it won't include the Novell Exchange Connector this will be a complete waste of development.
This is hoping it will include it!
The only reason I am not using sunbird, or another OSS Personal organization tool is that yahoo doesn't support iCal ( I have written to them suggesting it:c k).
http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/my/cgi_feedba
Even though I like downloading my email I use yahoo because the convenience of getting to my information anywhere is compelling.
I even pay ( gladly ) for pop access
I would love to use the sunbird client and the other OSS PIM tools in combination with yahoo so that I could download ( and update ) my PIM stuff anywhere.
Even more, I would love to pay GNU or some other OSS org for this rather then paying yahoo.
If GNU or another OSS org implemented this kind of yahoo-like service ( using all OS software ) it would kill 4 birds with one Free(dom) software stone.
1. I get the services I want
2. GNU gets money, which it always needs
3. GNU employs programmers to build an maintain
GNUYahoo ( GNUwho ? ) -- a worthy thing these
days in itself
4. Free(dom) & OS software gets showcased and put
into use.
Almost Geeks have some sort of webmail account and would love to support GNU or another OSS org rather then ________, especially if they implement featurs geeks want like better spam filtering.
If these sites were made user friendly GNU would get a bonus____ giving something to ordinary people that they would like____ which would make GNU, as well as Free(dom) software relevant to their lives.
GNU and OSS especially needs this if they want to fight and win political battles.
Just a thought
Did anyone else read this article and think that Mozilla was coming out with a combined Mail+Calendar called Lightning? Even the slashdot link title removes the 's, talk about misleading...
Most slashdotters just dont get that Outlook, (not Outlook Express as most here think) goes way beyond a simple mail client. Show me how to include all the synching, scheduling and work flow features available, or easily built onto of Outlook/Exchange and you might have something. Then just need to persuade organisations to deploy this shiny new unproven technology into their core infrastructure.
As a side rant I love firefox but thunderbird is a fairly average effort at best. I almost fell off my chair laughing at a post the other day about someone saying how cool and innovative the new sorting and grouping was, features that were available in Outlook 97 (and probably other mail clients at that period). This is another reason why Lightening, same as Chandler is not going to work. Just too far behind the curve and not focussed enough on power deployments.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Anyone else recognize the pattern?
1. MS dismisses competing software.
2. MS starts FUD:ing the software.
3. MS starts copying the functionality of the software.
4. MS touts new features as significant new MS "innovation! Hooray!
It is quite easy to see how successful a specific open source software package is by looking at where Microsoft places it on the "Microsoft attention"-scale.
I use Thunderbird in place of Outlook, and we're an Exchange shop. But, Microsoft still wins here. Unless Lightning does MAPI, it won't supplant Outlook. And, it breaks my heart to say it.
Outlook is tightly integrated with Exchange. If you use Exchange, you won't be switching any time soon (unless you're a sysadmin like me who cares about security... but that's not going to capture my user's attention... no, really... it won't).
Sure, it could replace Outlook Express on home systems with POP/IMAP accounts. But, corporate acceptance hinges on integration with Exchange (or replacing Exchange... which is no simple task, given corporate politics).
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
Oh, and for all you M$ fanboys: Microsoft is going to unbundle Media Player by January. So, in 9 days over the Christmas and New Year's holidays, Microsoft is going to be able to unbundle Media Player from the OS? Boy, it must have been really tightly integrated, eh?
I don't get what you're saying.
I don't think MS ever claimed it was tightly integrated, did they? There's no reason they can't just strip the app and leave all the underlying APIs and ActiveX objects - in fact they'd be irresponsible if the gutted them out too, it'd break loads of applications e.g. the copying animation in explorer.
So what's your point?
...unfortunately, not a single one of them is easy to use and the connectors for Outlook (Or, is that "Look Out!"...) cost money. The Toltec one's the cheapest, weighing in at $14 per user, but Kolab's NOT at all easy to make work right. Many things can and do tend to go wrong on it's install.
Now, if someone could come up with an Outlook connector (they're working on it, but it's not there yet...) that could connect to Kolab, OpenGroupware, or Open-Xchange, well it'd be a different story altogether.
The people talking about Outlook being a cut above don't know anything about Kontact or Evolution, obviously and the rest is a muddle right at the moment.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
- Undiscovered security holes ...
- Netscape invented Javascript and HTML e-mail, remember
- Buggy Mozilla core instead of buggy IE core
- Undiscovered bugs in RSS reader
-
Conclusion: Same insecurity, different pile.
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
Not unless it syncs with a PDA
Repeat after me. Calendaring. Calendaring. Calendaring.
Only the execs rally care about syncing to their PDAs/Treos/whatevers, and that CAN be done server side these days. What is much more of a deal-breaker is Outlook's meeting scheduling. Everyone I know in the company here uses it. Everyone in every company I've ever worked at has used Outlook to schedule meetings and confirm people can make it.
I have never understood what is so mind-bendingly complex about it. When I used to use a POP/IMAP client to get my mail, meeting invitations from an Outlook/Exchange user looked to be a set of key/value items, one per line, with all the data necessary for a client (such as Mozilla with the calendaring plugin) to parse it handily, ask the user if they want to add it/see their calendar/whatever, etc.
I honestly think that open-source developers resent Outlook so much, they can't bring themselves to do what those of us trying to use open source in corporate environments have been dying for- interworking with Outlook's meeting notifications and some form of well-integrated calendaring.
Please help metamoderate.
The big functions needed for most businesses are e-mail and shared calendars. I've really never seen the great majority of other features used, and I've worked in organizations ranging from 100 to 200,000 people.
So, let's say the 80% solution is just those two capabilities. For a 100-person organization:
Exchange Server + User CAL = $10700 (see pricing)
Thunderbird + Sunbird + a WebDAV folder for shared calendars = $0.00
(no hardware costs counted)
And TCO is negligible for the Mozilla stack; the Exchange server requires serious maintenance. In a mid-sized organization it seems to require about 10% of a full-time admin's time to dink with.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but the numbers work out quite well for me and mine.
Keep your friends close.
Keep your enemies in a little jar on your desk.
OS casts Lightning on DarkQueenM$'s (~Level 43 Necromancer) Outlook Abomination. Outlook Abomination shrugs it off and continues being worthless while DarkQueenM$ becomes enraged despite being unable to move under its own own cumbersome weight.
I won't switch to a Mozilla email client until they clean up the SEARCH function a bit. (Eudora's one advantage over other clients is in this area, in my opinion.)
I still see Mozilla email search results come back with wacky date sorting like "1/2003, 1/2004, 11/2003, 11/2004". I know it's more code, but you gotta sort dates by date...
I think that a two tiered approach is needed.
The client is straight-forward. It needs features like appointment scheduling, meetings, syching etc. Security would need to be the niche.
The second tier is a server solution to replace the Exchange portion. I don't think that Exchange is that great. So, a comparable open source solution tied into great existing MTA (PostFix, Sendmail, etc) or Mozilla-branded MTA.
The one-two punch may knock out the Outlook-Exchange gorilla.
Coderz 4 Life
Unless they are using some other method I'm unfamiliar with, third party Exchange retrieval stuff uses IMAP and requires that the Exchange server be running OWA.
That's what Ximian's first Evolution Connector was based on. It's all IMAP based. Outlook pre-2003 (and maybe post) both use RPCs and MAPI stuff.
The only problem I've experienced in trying to switch completely to Thunderbird is its inability to import my large (over 1 gig) Outlook PST files. This is on a P4 2.8 rig with a gig of RAM. Perhaps someone can write up an extension to read the PST files directly.
www.lonseidman.com
The only way to challenge Outlook successfully is 1> sync directly with MS Exchange, and maybe 2> run on Windows. If Lightning is good enough, and it syncs with MSE, people might switch to Linux to use it, in combination with a Linux "MS Office killer" like an improved OpenOffice.org (especially if OO.o syncs with MSE). Though a Mozilla will likely be completely cross-platform, so only the MSE sync is necessary.
All that IT investment (licenses, training, admin staff) has vaster momentum than any features. Until IT can replace Outlook with something that users barely notice is different, even a new version of Outlook will be harder to switch to than just using the current version. Luckily, MSE sync protocol can be licensed from MS - Palm has licensed it for their new Treo smartphones, and they're a fiercer competitor with MS than is Mozilla. Instead of pitching in to buy ads in the NY Times, let's license the MSE sync protocol, and kill MSE once and for all.
--
make install -not war
um, in windoze it does launch it automatically.
Under Linux (from what I remember) it is difficult because there is no notion of a default mail handler (and you can't assume that any one mail handler is on the system) and all can take arguments in different orders etc
Try Ctrl+M.
That an important part of the licensing cost for Exchange is the Client Access License (CAL) - this means regardless of what you pay for the code that runs on your desktop, you still need to pay Microsoft a non-trivial amount of cash for the privilege.
The fix is to provide a seamless migration to a non-exchange server with a calendar-sharing mechanism.
Now that I think of it, when MS was looking to de-throne NetWare, they created a utility that allowed Windows users to see NetWare shares through a single login account on the NetWare box.
This meant that customers could 'upgrade' to Windows and not need to but any more client licenses for Novell.
I wonder if we should find a way to enable calendar browsing via some sort of mechanism that exploits only a single CAL so that uses of the free server side could see Outlook/Exhange calendars without paying CALs for all of the free server users.
Just like the Microsoft mechanism, this needs to be seamless and transparent - to make migration to free software easy and painless.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Will it be able to sync with a palm? I have never used OE/Outlook, and have always used mozilla mail/thunderbird, but I have never seen that it is compatible with hotsync. Will thunderbird/sunfire be able to do this?
at least with firebird, I was reminded of the Fiery Phoenix or even better DARK PHOENIX. Or even just the ORIGINAL meaning rocked.
How come nobody has mentioned Novell Evolution as a viable contendor to Outlook? It already connects to Exchange servers! It may be a bit buggy, but even Outlook crashes occasionally! It's the only email client I use @ work, since the bastards there run M$ Exchange! (At the rate Exchange keeps screwing up I might be able to convert them to Postfix, although the M$ admins are probably the ones to blame for the bad config) AFAIK there were plans to release a windows port of Evolution, what happened to that? That could be a real challenge to M$ Office monopoly!
Are there any Linux progs out there connecting to Exchange 5.5 servers?
Paul Revere was a tattle-tale.
my penguin gave to me...
Bill Gates on the Street.
On the second day of Linux my penguin gave to me two
email clients and Bill Gates on the street.
On the third day of Linux...
What I understand is that Lightning will function in a manner similar to KDE's Kontact application: You can run the mail and calendar programs from inside it, or you can run them seperately. For example, if I want to check my email, I can start up Kontact and open Kmail from there, or I can start KMail independently.
I have gas, but my car uses petrol.
Story after story, month after month, year after year, I read on Slashdot about how worried Microsoft should be about OSS Competitor X, but after all of these posts, Microsoft remains dominant.
I think these "MS is worried" posts need to wait until these OSS competitors start taking significant market share away from Microsoft.
Sure, the likes of Firefox et. al. could eventually challenge Microsoft, but lets wait until it actually starts happening, OK?
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
... thanks to sysadmins following the "best practices" from Microsoft, Thunderbird/Mozilla Mail is only usable for writing and sending email. So I'm stuck to Outlook for reading mail.
The sooner the open source community develops a calendar client that is fully integrated with an open source groupware server, the sooner we will be able to mount a credible challenge against Outlook.
Reduce people's dependency on Outlook and it'll become much, much easier to topple Exchange. Topple Exchange and you've got a good chance at completely removing Microsoft from the server room!
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Well, "single app" is a bit ambiguous. "Crash" is also ambiguous.
A single bloated process can use enough resources to effectively bring a machine to a halt, ie. not respond in a timely manner according to a human timescale.
The processor hasn't halted/core dumped/BSODed, but the system is effectively unusable at this point.
So you try to kill the errant process. You Ctrl-Alt-Del, wait for taskmgr to come up. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's extremely slow, and you can tell it to kill the process, and sometimes it even listens.
I'm sure eventually it will respond, but you don't have an infinite amount of time to resolve the issue. So you generally shut the machine down as gracefully as possible after waiting a "reasonable" amount of time -- 30 minutes seems fair.
#1. Start-->Shutdown-->logoff
#2. Start-->Shutdown-->Shutdown
#3. (try to kill the explore.exe if taskmgr is responding)
#4. Hold in the power button for 10 seconds, mutter under your breath, and pray it comes back up nicely.
#5. Boot and Uninstall crappy application.
The problem with this is trying to break into the all-important business market. If you can't talk to Exchange, you're DOA. The PHBs will want the same functionality without replacing all the backend servers.
The Connector package for Evolution works nicely, for all that the underlying transport is a bit of a hack (using Outlook Web Access). I suppose it's easier than reverse-engineering the MAPI protocol and hoping MS doesn't break your work with the next Exchange revision.
I'll second the comments about whether Connector code could be re-used into the Lightning codebase here. It would make the product far more acceptable into the business market, and give a much better shot at breaking the Outlook stranglehold.
Anyone else notice that anything done in XUL is a sluggish piece of shit? Get it out of my face.
Speaking of sluggish, anyone else notice that firefox still has horrible memory leaks despite being 'stable'? Fucking ridiculous.
What would be really nice is if someone came out
with open standard protocols that support all the things that exchange does.
Email is already taken care of with IMAP4.
We need an open protocol for Calender, Tasks, Journals, Contacts, and all that good stuff.
Then we can have a ton of clients written that can plug into any number of email server.
We are running Exchange 5.5, and upgrading to a newer version is incrediably hard. MS screwed up big time by requiring active directory, and all that jazz to make it work. I don't understand why Exchange can't just run stand-alone or with NT security. All about making people upgrade, probably going to byte them in the but.
"I think Outlook leaves a lot of room for a fast competitor," said a Mozilla volunteer involved in the project, who asked not to be named."
Boy isn't that the truth. I'm glad to see that I am not the only one who thinks that MS Office 2003 is bloated and slow. I actually leave outlook off now unless I know I have a meeting or something. It puts too high a load on my laptop. I launch it, use it, then close it.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is *lightning* that does the work..."
Yep - just checked 1.0 again. It still doesn't know how to sort the date column in the search results. Buh-bye.
Ximian Evolution should be considered the Outlook killer.
I don't mean to insult but how many people are in your business? How many offices? For a small office where everyone is within shouting distance, there isn't much need for email/calendaring clients that talk. My consulting biz runs exchange but only because it was free(action pack). Depending on the type of business, an organization with more (~15 or so) people and with more than one office, it (can) rapidly becomes crucial. I do a lot of work with Title companies (place where you sign papers to settle on house) and many times they have several offices but share guys that roam around and do the actual closings. Our largest has 35 offices in various states. Integrated calendars are crucial.
I suppose we could switch them to a web-based calendar deal but Exchange provides that already with OWA so why go to the bother? Inter-office email rides the VPN so sensitive stuff can be sent without having to teach all the ding-dongs about encryption. In addition, there are some great add-ons for exchange that do some really cool stuff with exchange calendars (team calendar by MS is one).
The other thing about exchange is the centralized storage of email/calendar/contact data. I don't have to worry about backing up 10-20 seperate pst/mbx/dbx/whatever email files. There are automated ways of backing up these files but you might (or might not) be surprised at how often users can fuck that up.
I will grant you this though: for many businesses the genesis of a new exchange installation is due to a new employee who used to work someplace else and simply can't do without it. Even when the $$thousands spent on purchase and implementation would pay for a web solution for years to come. In this much it is psychological.
"Thunderbird does not offer an equivalent comparison to Microsoft Office Outlook," Microsoft said in a statement. "Customers expect much more than simple calendaring and the ability to send and receive e-mails. The integration of Exchange and Outlook far outweighs any feature that Thunderbird may deliver, and we don't see it as being applicable for serious business use."
Checkout The Open-Source Outlook Connector Project. The project aims to provide a open source connector for Microsoft Office Outlook compatible with other open protocol clients, eg. Mozilla.
So that Microsoft spokesperson will have to come up with something else very soon.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
From the Tools menu, select 'Read Mail'. This will launch your default email client - and thus, Thunderbird, if you've set it as default. Couldn't be easier'n that.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
I haven't used the calendaring component yet, but right now Thunderbird is still beta-quality code. I'm rather disappointed that they released the current build as 1.0 - lots of bugs all over the place.
Fix the message duplication problem, the mail filtering, the RSS feed integration (odd that FireFox handles RSS properly, but Thunderbird dupes article headings), and various/sundry other things that go boom in TBird, and I'll have a little more confidence in this bundle as an Outlook challenger. As it stands, TBird 1.0 barely goes toe-to-toe with OE. And being a complete, unabashed fan of FFox, this is a real letdown.
I've got the sneaking suspicion that the relative runaway success of their browser tree has gone to the heads of the Mozilla.org folks. They think they're big-boy legitimate "contendahs" across the board, and are rushing stuff out the door to prop up the posturing that open-source alternatives are/will be kicking Microsoft arse up and down the 'net. They need to be careful that they don't do a crash-n-burn by spewing half-baked crap on the coattails of a solid product.
At 3 A.M. you can see people's auras; at five you can see their contrails...
Sunbird is 0.2... it's undergoing heavy development, but even the /. abstract said 'by the middle of next year'.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Security becomes harder as the core program gets bigger
The program will start slower if you only want e-mail
Next thing to add becomes built in feature X and Y and Z to enable even more functions...
Please don't try to make a combo like this, but instead cooperate to find how these two programs needs to interact, then only make a plugin to integrate them. That would have been something...
A new combo program - I don't want it...
I've tried Thunderbird before, but it never imported my mail correctly. I imported everything but as separate folders, my inbox wasnt the thunderbird inbox but rather a separate inbox under an imported folder, it was messy.
I have emails from 1996 to today, thousands of emails, and it was too much work to manaully fix it so i always deleted thunderbird.. but i just tried it again today and it finally imports right.
Now if it would just import my message rules. (is there some secret way to do that or must i manually do every rule?)
Also, i havent actually checked for new email yet because i want to get it configured the way i like it first, so im not sure but.. in my current email client, i have about 20 email accounts, several of which are disabled in the automatic send/recv, i only get mail from these accounts when i manually choose to do so.. can i do this in thunderbird, and if so, did thunderbird already import those settings from my previous client?
Like those undiscovered millions stuffed in my pillows. If I can use simple conjecture to prove they exist and list them as real then surely I can buy a house with my pillows.
Alas, I am becoming a god.
Thunderbird is my favorite email client and it still SUCKS. Is there no such thing as a decent mail client? IMO the main reason mail clients suck is because they are stuck in the conceptual stoneage. Mail files are typically kept in flatfile db's or some proprietary nightmare system. SMTP, POP, and IMAP are all rather rickety systems not really designed for security or scalability. Email still has no sepperate transport for binary files. Email has no contacts.
Why is Thunderbird still folder based? Evolution and even Outlook have decent virtual folders whereas Thunderbird's suck. Gmail is more the direction to go though I think. Store the mail in a db and just use queries to define virtual folders.
I have more than a decade of email, several dozen gigs worth, stored and there is no mail client that can handle it without a very fast CPU and several gigs of RAM. This is just so wrong. I have apps I've written than deal with much more information and they can run on a P300Mhz with 64MB of RAM easily.
Before you start trying to clone Outlook why not take the time to make Thunderbird a really rocksolid mail client first? Stability, security, speed, and a small footprint are what'll sell. Get those working and THEN add in whatever extra features people desire.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The only effective way to kill off Outlook, or even compete with it effectively is to first kill off Exchange.
Until there is a feature-for-feature (or at least close) drop-in replacement for Exchange people will stick with Outlook. Now I'm not talking about assembling some IMAP/LDAP/SMTP/iCal monster from different parts, rather a true, pre-packaged installer that handles most if not all of the setup and configuration.
Once you liberate the back end server you'll have no problem with the client.
Here's something slightly OT, but related.
I have the Mozilla Logo in Adobe Illustrator format (.ai). However little of OSS can read it correctly (except Adobe Reader). I can get it into ps format, but I still can't get it into SVG format (eventual destination) from there.
Its called Evolution - you just need to switch the OS too, but that's free as well.
Not entirely practical. There is no real protocol between exchange and Outlook traditionally. The whole thing has been done via RPC. Samba did it, but that took an enormous amount of effort. Effort, at least for MAPI, that can be broken very easily.
The best solution I've found, and I am working on, is to write a Outlook connector via Extended MAPI. Our connector is called The Open-Source Outlook Connector Project.
Mozilla plans to use a protocol called CalDAV, which is still in development. We're developing for the same protocol. Hence Outlook and Mozilla would be compatible as far as Calendars go.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Barca provides safe and secure email (POP and IMAP) although the IMAP is a little weak, the ability to send calendar invites to Outlook users, task management, free form notes, and some of the other Outlook like features.
I've been using it since Beta - not a bad PIM app. It's still 1.x code and has a ways to go from a features standpoint, but if you need that Outlook stuff and don't mind paying for software, it's a much safer alternative. http://pocosystems.com
(note - I have no connection to the company - just a happy user)
Indeed, Sunbird has yet to release its 0.2 version, and has never claimed to be a complete piece of software. The developer resources applied to Sunbird and the Mozilla calendaring components in general have grown materially over the last months, during which we've seen important refactoring work to support multiple calendar protocols, rearchitecture of the UI to handle async networking, implementation of initial CalDAV support, improvements in several pieces of the UI (including, you'll be glad to hear, a rationalization of the menu system), and many other smaller fixes. Attachments, attendee management, a sqlite-based local store for improved performance; I could go on, but it's more interesting to read the checkin logs for yourself, I assure you.
Now, as the Wiki indicates -- would that you could get to it! -- competition with Outlook is not a primary goal of Lightning at this point. To do calendaring in the year 2004 requires that you compete with Outlook in some sense, because they really own that market pretty completely, but knocking off their feature set isn't what we're after here. A lot of people have been asking for Sunbird's calendar capabilities (and more) to be integrated more tightly into the Thunderbird mail interface, and that's what Lightning is all about.
I believe that by the summer of 2005 the Lightning project will have developed software that is useful and interesting to a large enough number of people to warrant releasing it. Do I believe that people will abandon Outlook en masse for Lightning in its first release? Seems unlikely. Do I think that there are some users of Outlook who might rather use Thunderbird+Lightning at that point? I'm pretty sure there are.
Exchange interoperability is obviously a hot topic, and rightly so; IMO it was one of the most significant features of Evolution, and one that we're grateful Novell saw fit to release as open source after the acquisition of Ximian. The new protocol architecture we've been designing and implementing over the last few months should accomodate an exchange-protocol plugin, at least on the calendar side, though nobody has yet stepped up to write it. I have reason to believe that a serious contribution of such a plugin, no doubt based on lessons learned from the Evolution connector's source, would be very warmly received into the calendar tree, and featured prominently in Lightning.
I wish I had a local copy of the wiki's Q&A so that I could post it here, but, alas, I do not.
Mike
I currently use Thunderbird as a replacement for Outlook. I installed the Mozilla Calender plugin for my scheduling and todo list needs. I use a little program called Thundertray to minimize it to tray when it's not up. I use LDAP for a global addressbook (I'm actually using Active Directory to function as the LDAP server). On top of all that, I get my RSS feeds in the same app.
All in all, it's less maintenance, doesn't hog half as much memory, and just overall a cleaner program. I can't wait till the 1.0 version of Sunbird is out, then I can probably get rid of the mozilla calender.
Exchange SUCKS...
It is such an inaccessible format that restricts you from being able to do anything outside of Microsoft's box.
Here we are always wishing the Exchange used a SQL database that was openly accessible. It'd be so nice to be able to just create views on the date or extend the field records with appending tables. All in SQL.
So why not go that route? Utilize a MySQL database. Construct with mandatory system tables that would be locked and unmodifiable. But allow custom extension....
I mean what the heck is a firefox?
The fact that a lot of users of Mozilla Firefox have their UA switched to the arguably cuter "Firepanda" might give you a hint. A firefox is a red panda (Google image search or buy plush toy).
Outlook is a surprisingly good program, but Exchange is ghastly beyond all comprehension. It is clearly the weak link. This is why things like the JBoss Mail API are so important.
The proper way to handle email/calendaring/contacts/etc.... is clearly by using an appserver on top of a relational database. This is a textbook place for a good appserver. Just use EJB (or whatever) to represent all the objects (mail messages, etc...), and make all the functionality available through session beans and web services. This is quite easy (compared to managing the terror that is Exchange). Then if you need to, make a custom connector to communicate over whatever braindead language the various clients use, it can just convert that to the native session bean calls.
The primary advantage is this.... It inherits essentially everything from the appserver. Clustering is available, so is every imaginable sort of backup (through the DB). Enterprises already need to manage appservers, so there's no additional piece of software. Also, all the data goes into the SQL database of your choice, just like all the other data in the company. No more priesthood of people desperately trying to keep exchange running an stable, it's just another appserver like everything else, and its data lives wherever you want it to live.
In addition, a simple API like communication protocol would be available to anyone who could run Java (that is, everyone), and if that's not good enough, then you can use IMAP or whatever....
The whole mess could be just one large jar file. I've seen apps distributed like this (iTracker is an example). For those of us who just want something set up quickly, it has an express install that is just one huge blob of java (Jboss + libraries + the app itself + HSQL database), that you just untar and run on any platform. If you need more, then minimal configuration adds whatever else you need. That's how software is supposed to be.
I've seen nothing that works as well as Outlook 2003 for managing incoming and outgoing data and communication. I can receive a constant stream of incoming email and deal with it on the fly. No other email client works as well. Here is why:
All incoming emails pop up a small note in the notification area. This note contains the name, subject and a few lines of the email. It will fade and disappear after a few seconds. Before it does I can bring it up, flag it (more about that later) cause it to disappear immediately, or delete it immediately.
All emails can be flagged with different colors with a mouse click. You know how it goes when you are "catching up" on email after lunch or in the morning? You go down through a ton of unimportant messages, see a few that need taken care of and occasionally hit that one that is so important it's worth immediately breaking away from going through your mail. With OL2003 you do your "catch up" with flags. You can blow through the whole list and flag stuff that you need to go back to, red-flag those critical items, maybe blue-flag the personal stuff you'll get to on your lunch hour. You don't have to remember to get back to something or break off from email to handle something before you forget. I've not seen anything else that has this feature and it makes a HUGE difference when you are catching up. When you get something done, you just click the flag and it turns to a check box. At the end of the day you can make a quick glance to the built in search that shows you any orange-flags (for instance) that you left unchecked.
It also integrates with messenger. If you start to send someone an email the moment their name is completed it will check their online status. You may start typing your short email only to notice that the person is online. A quick right click and you're in IM instead of email.
Cleaning up your inbox/outbox? There are tools built in that will let you see "All the old crap that's big or has an attachment" for instance. Sure every email client lets you setup rules or already has one built in that's similar but nothing does it as well.
There are other features that I never think about until I'm stuck on another email client. I was typing something on Lotus Notes (the suck) and without thinking, right clicked a particular word. I was expecting a list of synonyms to come up but no such luck. The polish and attention to detail in OL2003 is unmatched. With many of the other Office 2003 apps I can get by just fine in any other product, Wordperfect, Open Office etc. OL2003 though is head and shoulders above the competition right now. It's the first time in a long time that I can actually say a piece of software has increased my productivity.
Now since I'm paying MS, oops sorry I meant M$, a compliment here it's the law that someone needs to come bash me personally or rant about M$'s evils.... Outlook 2003 is still the shit though.
There is a way with exchange 2000 and 03 to ban MAPI clients by version number - the exchange best practice analyser tool talks about it.
As for IMAP, the exchange admin might have pop and imap disabled. I am not sure if the admin can ban certain imap clients by version string
I though PDAs were dead in the US :-)
I still see Mozilla email search results come back with wacky date sorting like "1/2003, 1/2004, 11/2003, 11/2004".
Set your date format to ISO 8601 (yyyy-mm-dd) and it'll never happen again. In fact, the general public switched to it years ago... IN JAPAN!
If they intergate sunbird well and small business use a web host that has IMAP then mass quantities of server licences and exchange licences will turn into small web host payments
You can remove Media Player with XPLite, but if you do Windows acts like the MS video codecs aren't there -- even if you install the stand-alone codec package.
I'm thinking that it is probably a good idea to jumpstart this project by stealing code from projects such as Kontact and Evolution. I'm guessing the Mozilla Public License is compatible with the GPL, so I doubt there are legal issues.
I don't know how many other corporate people out there use Lotus Notes - but I find it cumbersome, slow, and often counter-intuitive. It would be great to have Mozilla Lightning as a nice front-end to Lotus. Of course a lot of work would have to go into stabilizing the GUI, as well as interfacing it to Lotus Domino - but since when have OS-ers not been up for a challenge?
Overall, I think Lightning will probably make a great free version of Microsoft Outlook. I may even be able to convince some of my worm-inviting, virus-infecting, Outlook-using friends to make the switch.
I use kmail, and it handles meeting invitations great. I think evolution does the same.
-TN
The biggest complain about Outlook is the lack of multiple hotmail account support. Even the latest and greatest Outlook version can only have 1 hotmail account per login. Anyone know if Lightning can do better? I already dumped IE for firefox, maybe this is next.
Uh, Mozilla Mail has done this since at least version 1.4 - except for integrating with messenger. Old news to me - sorry bud!
I've not seen anything else that has this feature
But did you look? I don't know about Thunderbird, but the classic Mozilla does have this feature.
A newborn is said to take on the existing king when it can do little else the shit on itself and smile at people. Yes we know how that turned out, but I think this is jumping the gun a bit.
-----Original Message-----
From: smilin [mailto: http://slashdot.org/~Smilin/]
Sent: Thurday, December 24, 2004 10:29 AM
To: slashdot@slashdot.org
Subject: Re: Re: Outlook 2003 rocks. Period.
"I've seen nothing that works as well
>as Outlook 2003 for managing incoming and
>>outgoing data and communication. I can receive >a constant stream of incoming email and >deal
>>>with it on the fly. No other email client
>works as well."
Hmmm. I guess that not being a mutt user, you
>don't notice the broken threading, the lack of single key read,
>the oversized and easily
>corruptable mailboxes, and a long history of serious attachment-related problems as being
on >>
>
>
>the laundry list of features some people just don't want.
But it rocks, right?
What we need now is a shady lawyer to sue MS, prove a monopoly in corporate email servers, and force them to open up Exchange so competing apps can integrate in the same manner. There has to be a way for a lawyer to profit from this.
Greetings,
e +O utlook/2100-7344_3-5501618.html
Since it appears that Thunderbird + Firebird now wants to compete more with Outlook, I'd like to propose an approach that may make this possible. Microsoft's comments here:
http://news.com.com/Mozillas+Lightning+to+strik
Are valid to a certain extent. People have come to demand more from "PIM" applications. Assuming Thunderbird and Sunbird were successfully integrated, that alone is not enough to compete with Outlook + Exchange. People want their data seemlessly synced up to all interfaces in which they access it. Exchange provides this currently. If I run Exchange and I can access my email, calendar, and contacts from Outlook, Outlook Web Access, and portable devices (i.e. phones and pdas) that offer Exchange plugins (i.e. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/) and everything "just works" seemlessly.
I believe the same can be said for Thunderbird + Sunbird without too much effort. Obviously, Thunderbird + Sunbird is just part of the solution in my above example and I am not proposing that the Mozilla foundation tries to build all the software for the whole solution. I am proposing that we come up with a viable solution to integrate all interfaces in which people access email, calendar data, contact data, todo lists, etc. on their primary PIM app, web based PIM interfaces, and mobile devices.
First lets take a look at what we have today: IMAP4 basically takes care of email for us, LDAP to a certain extent handles contacts, and ICAL over WebDAV handles calendar and todo list issues. I am not proposing that these interfaces are abandoned (especially IMAP) - but I would like to propose an alternative that may offer an easier way to reach our end goal of complete PIM data integration. I'm not saying that LDAP and and ICAL over WebDAV are bad - I just don't think they are going to offer a solution that can compete with Outlook + Exchange.
I think SyncML (http://www.openmobilealliance.org/syncml) offers a viable alternative that could relatively easily be bolted on to Thunderbird + Sunbird. SyncML offers the following benefits from my viewpoint:
* Open standard that already has a lot of traction. For example, it
is part of the WAP 2.0 standard so 90% of the cell phones you can
buy today already support synchronizing contacts, calendars, todo
lists over HTTP/SyncML. Also, many cell phones are now offering
email clients with IMAP support.
* To really compete with Outlook + Exchange, Thunderbird + Sunbird
will need to support Exchange. This is possible over SyncML and
this open source project: http://sync4j.funambol.com/.
* SyncML support should be there soon for the two most popular open
source web mail clients: IMP (http://www.horde.org/imp/) and
Squirrelmail (http://squirrelmail.org/). For example, IMP is
working on this already: http://www.horde.org/sync and a
Squirrelmail plugin to support SyncML should be easy enough to
write assuming Squirrelmail rolls out support for decent Calendar
and Contacts (already in CVS for both)
Furthermore, the Mozilla Foundation could host documentation for sys admins on how to setup Exchange integration over SyncML etc. A comprehensive HowTo would almost be a requirement since we are tying multiple software projects together in order to offer rich PIM client + Webmail + Mobile device integration.
Anyways, I am just brain-storming here and thought I would share this idea since this appears to be a topic of focus recently. It would appear to me that this would be the path of least resistance to offer a solution that can compete with Outlook + Exchange.
Evolution can not be made to run on windows ever period.
(Note to the astute reader: I wanted to ask this as a question but my questions never get answered on slashdot, so I thought I'd try making a controversial universal statement and wait for people to correct me)
I don't get it. Mail.yahoo.com lets me access my e-mail from anywhere, has calendar (shared capabilities), PDA support, built in Norton Antivirus, Web Bug removal, remote pop3 for archival, remote pop3 access into other pop3 servers, reminders for events and notification of new e-mail (YaHoo Messenger), public file sharing (My Briefcase), good antispam software, and on and on.
.02
I have Office PRO 2003. I have a number of Exchange 2000 licenses. I have Thunderbird 1.0 and Sunbird installed, as well as Outlook. I run 3 antivirus/spam gateways (eSafe, Mimesweeper, SpamAssasin.)
I use YaHoo more than any of these. Outlook has a few e-mail reports that go to it (quicker searching of large e-mails.) Thunderbird is used to access several POP3/IMAP accounts for archival. But I use YaHoo for most everything else. It just works, and I can access it from anywhere.
My
I've got 1 and 2 covered (Courier IMAP and Mozilla calendar with WebDAV backend). There is still no uniform contact database backend... and don't start talking LDAP.
You don't need to cobble together a complex servers olution out of IMAP, WebDAV, and LDAP: even though it wasn't designed for it, IMAP is capable of supporting mail store, calendaring, and contacts, and IMAP is already widely available.
I think your description of how Outlook helps you get things done is more an indication of what an organized person you are, not the quality of the application. I'm not saying there isn't an upside to Outlook, but here are the downsides I know:
1.- Big and bloated.
2.- Proprietary email format, not even legible by other Microsoft mail clients, appends trailing junk to email.
3.- Clippy.
4.- Windows (9x, NT, 2000, XP, 2003, Longhorn).
5.- Cost.
But that doesn't mean it's not right for some people. Except for item #2. That one does. It means it's evil.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Who cares about clients when gmail gives you a gig of storage?
I think for a FOSS meeting scheduler, something web-based is preferable to what Outlook does.
In particular, in order to set up a meeting with a group, the web application sends a link to a web page to each person in the group. People then indicate on that web page what their availability is and the systems schedules the meeting and confirms it by E-mail.
I think the checking of one's own calendar and the entering of the meeting into one's calendar is not something that should be automated: it is good to expend a few seconds of conscious effort on those because there are a lot of factors that go into scheduling other than merely whether there is a free time slot.
Furthermore, even if an automated mechanism were desirable, Outlook assumes that the whole world will just be assimilated into its particular mechanisms. That may be OK for Three-of-Twenty-Gates, but it is unacceptable for FOSS.
who's talking about Evolution?
One interesting new, very well supported project, is the Open Source Applications Foundation's "Chandler". OSAF is Mitch Kapor's baby and aims to provide a next-generation General Information Manager that can interoperate both thru servers and peer to peer.
Chandeler's skillset includes email, scheduling, contacts, documents, and more, all collaboratively, cross-platform and hugely extensible. Well, that's the plan, check out the latest release for yourself.
Oh, and how does this relate to the Mozilla projects? Probably pretty well as Kapor was the founding Chair of the Mozilla Foundation.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Most slashdotters just dont get that Outlook, (not Outlook Express as most here think) goes way beyond a simple mail client. Show me how to include all the synching, scheduling and work flow features available, or easily built onto of Outlook/Exchange and you might have something.
Outlook's functionality is pathetic compared to what Lotus Notes groupware used to offer. But did Lotus Notes win in the market? No, it didn't, because winning in the market is not about having the most features.
As a side rant I love firefox but thunderbird is a fairly average effort at best. I almost fell off my chair laughing at a post the other day about someone saying how cool and innovative the new sorting and grouping was, features that were available in Outlook 97 (and probably other mail clients at that period).
Your comment is just as ridiculous as theirs because those features weren't new with Outlook 97 or other mail clients of that period either, they go back at least another decade. You demonstrate again a fundamental truth about users and features: users are ignorant, and having the most/newest features doesn't matter. What matters is that you package and sell the right features well.
Then just need to persuade organisations to deploy this shiny new unproven technology into their core infrastructure.
Microsoft killed its competitors by moving in from the bottom. It didn't matter whether IT staff wanted the whole enterprise to run on a mainframe or Lotus Notes, individuals and workgroups chose Windows.
There is no single app that can replace everything that we use outlook for.
And there shouldn't be. All those features should be handled by different applications, tied together through open protocols and formats.
What Microsoft is doing with Outlook and what Lotus did with Notes before them is to rush to market with a big, monolithic product. That has allowed them to avoid issues of standardization of protocols and formats and capture a large part of the market in the short term, but it won't stand in the long term. Over the next 10-20 years, monolithic groupware like Outlook will disappear and it will be replaced by a dozen separate servers and applications. And your business can't afford not to go along with that because Outlook's built-in functionality will be substandard compared to those.
...isn't really a solution, just substituting of one bullshit way of doing things for another.
I aggree that Exchange should be more like every other damn DB app out there, but please, anything but Java. I've got enough bloatware as is.
There is an extension for Thunderbird which adds the calendar capabilities from Sunbird. I use Sunbird as a separate app, so I can't comment on the extent of the integration.
Got news for you, if it doens't run on windows, it won't be killing anything.
Its not that no-one has thought of that before, but that building a performant e-mail server on a general-purpose SQL backend is suprisingly hard. SQL databases are attractive because they allow general querying (yay for power) and suck because you pay a huge performance penalty for all that power.
I agree. I use NewsGator to integrate RSS feeds into Outlook 2003, and I have over 700 feeds. I can go through all of these, using the flagging features and "read" all 700 feeds in about 1/2 hour in the morning. It does help a lot.
yes, it could. It could be much easier.
I absolutely hate it when people try to make things "easier" and instead succeeed only in making it completely non-configurable.
So no, firefox does not have a way to launch thunderbird. Firefox has a way of bombing out to explorer instead- you know, that same method which allowed web pages to run arbitrary commands simply by viewing them.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I've seen Microsoft Windows 2000 crash by running a program running as a user (not Administrator). A friend of mine was running a Nintendo64 emulator (which was running a colorful scrolling text demo that also played music). It worked for a few minutes, and then the entire OS went down. Why the OS crashed wasn't apparent without running a debugger, but since we didn't care that much to learn what apparently buggy system calls were being made, we didn't pursue this any further. I don't think simply stating that Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP cannot be crashed by a single application is worth +4 Informative.
Digital Citizen
"The interface work will also enable us to easily extend Sunbird in the future, which will hopefully make it a lot easier to implement stuff like synchronization with a palm pilot for example."
m ing-for-sunbird.html
http://www.babylonsounds.com/2004/12/new-stuff-co
media hype aside, the developers are aware of what features are needed in order to compete with outlook. like many people have pointed out: sunbird is currently at version 0.2.
patience.
like a knight in shining armor/from a long time ago
Lightning will not be popular in corporate environments for several reasons. Some of these have already been mentioned, but some have not.
1. Outlook is "free" when you buy Office. Until OpenOffice is a true competitor to Office and companies stop buying Office, there's no reason to switch to a program with less features when you have one already.
2. Outlook 2003 is awesome. See other posts for details, but its ability to aggregate information, plus security features like remote image blocking, prove it to be an area of Office that Microsoft is actually proving. It'll be hard for Lightning to catch up to a moving target when it's already behind.
3. Never underestimate the power of PDA syncing. One poster claims that the only people who care about this are executives. That alone is enough to warrant a site license of Outlook. What IT staff would commit suicide by not giving the execs PDA syncing? In reality, PDA syncing is used by many more than the execs, unless you count college students, IT professionals, cops, and teachers as executives.
4. MAPI-compliance. You don't have to have an Exchange server (a bad idea in my opinion), but you do have to have a connector if you want Outlook to communicate with your non-Microsoft mail server. This is fine; most vendors provide the connector with the package, which is really just vendor-specific MAPI drivers. This is the only way they can compete with Exchange Server's functionality. Well, if you're creating a new email client that's supposed to be a competitor to Outlook, you'd better make it act just like Outlook, because no vendor is going to create a new Connector for a program with such a small install base.
5. Integration with calendering systems. We decided to go with Oracle Calendar instead of Exchange, since we already run Oracle's mail server (Oracle's solutions are Linux-based and very standards-compliant). So now, in addition to MAPI, you have to have a way for your calender server to interface with Lightning, also. We do, of course, because Oracle's Outlook connector also interfaces with the Calender server. Again, in order for Lightning to succeed, it's going to have to work with the connectors already out there. Nobody wants to use a standalone Calender app anymore, after they see the way they can integrate with Outlook. And this better sync with your PDA as well.
This program has to be the hub of everything you do. Outlook is moving towards becoming the center of organization and time management. That's a lot more than email with a calendar.
I doubt there's that big of a performance hit to justify merging them together.
If it's possible to keep them seperate and allow them to launch each other I would go that route.
I wouldn't think it would be that difficult to get them to communicate as seperate applications.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Well said, and you barely touched upon some of Outlooks other integration features and sharing capabilities.
Everyone claming that this is an "Outlook Killer" seems to have never used Outlook/Exchange in a business environment. Prior posters have already talked about calendar and contact sharing, so I won't go into that.
Realize also that Outlook integrates with every other MS program.
You can be viewing a Contact and immediately launch MapPoint to get directions.
You can use Word as your email editor for advanced formatting features.
You can use Project in conjuction with Exchange to send out emails about project status and new information. People can "check in" to the system and tell it what their progress is.
Copy and Pasting from any MS app (even Excel) into an Outlook email is seamless and darn-near perfect.
If you're working on a complex Word document and need a bunch of people to proof/edit, you can distribute it to everyone, they make their changes and send back, and Word will combine everything together into one doc with everyone's changes in different colors.
The list goes on and on and on. And until the Open Source community crawls out of their anti-corporate cave and starts to actually *use* these features, they will never be able to create a product that rivals Outlook/Exchange.
Meanwhile, MS is working on further enhancements to the Office Suite that tie in CRM software, accounting, and more. As a sales person, you'll be able to use Outlook to view your prospects and quotes. As an AP person, you'll be able to view pending invoices and pay them. All this tied into the overall system.
Basically, for anything to be a "killer" of Outlook, it's got to be a killer for the whole Office Suite.
-David
Does anyone remember what happened to the outlook killer being written by the guy that wrote the Uncensored BBS?
Bypass Compulsory Web Registration -- http://bugmenot.com/
What you fail to mention is that you need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get that functionality.
Just price the whole project/project server thing for a company with 200 employees and then post it here for everyone to see.
Aside from that if you buy into an all MS solution then you have just handed the fate of your organization to one vendor and you will never be able to leave that vendor and none of your stuff will ever work with anything else in your network not made by MS.
evil is as evil does
Those are all good points, and the cost of the investment must be measured against the return (from employee efficiencies and collaboration).
/. comment.
One could also argue that email and internet access are unnecessary costs, and should be done away with in favor of postal mail, faxes, and phones.
However, I wouldn't go saying that you will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for just 200 employees. That's a typical
I just reviewed a recent proposal for a school district with 4000 employees. The cost to run Exchange (multiple boxes, clients, administration, installation, backups, the whole gig) was just under $100,000. The company also wanted $5,000 per month for ongoing services. That does not include user Office licenses though.
Where I work, we have 50 employees who are all very heavy email users. One box does it all. We have one local admin guy who takes care of that box and all the other workstations. Works great.
-David
While I'm sure you'll be bashed, you're right. Outlook is fantastic -- from the point of view of the end-user.
Exchange, on the other hand... is a terrible back-end. Outlook isn't that hot either when it comes to sending mail or meeting requests to non-Outlook users. And its IMAP support is (IMO) intentionally broken. But most users never see that, they just see the pretty UI. Outlook is one of the few applications that Microsoft deserves any praise for.
No, I don't want to explore the Recycle Bin.
Isn't outlook just using an OLE control to do that, so can't you just use wine or similar to wrap it up (a bit like /use/lib/win32)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Exchange is incredibly cost-prohibitive to the small businesses I've worked with, which means they'll never bother with it, yet most of them use Outlook as their calendar/MUA/task manager. It'd be great to find an Exchange-a-like alternative that'd work with Thunderbird, Evolution, and Outlook reliably. Any suggestions?
On Linux you only have to disrupt the Window manager - which is much easier than taking the entire OS.
All you have to do is crash X11 (which seems to happen a lot) - and your entire desktop vanishes, taking you back to the command line. You've technically not crashed the OS, but all your applications were killed and any unsaved data is lost.
It's happened to me many times.
The $100,000 cost you indicate is just for Exchange Server by itself, and likely only for the first year. While that's only $25 per employee, add on Office, Project, etc. which are all more than $25 per employee per year and you begin to see where the original poster's "hundreds of thousands of dollars" estimate was coming from.
At our company, we budget for annual 10% price increases for our MS software every year. That is, every year we expect to pay MS 110% of what we paid last year. The costs to stay on the MS platform are not insubstantial, especially when projected several years into the future.
In many organizations, the productivity gains from the whiz-bang features may be worth the significant extra expenses. (There are also productivity losses associated with every round of MS upgrades.) In others, they may not be. At our company, I don't really know. We will be conducting a study about this issue in the near future.
Also, many of the features you mention (one click MapPoint integration, etc.) are more flash than substance. I can't imagine that single feature saving our sales people more than a minute or two daily. Something to think about anyway. Productivity claims are often more ephemeral than real when it comes to software, in my experience.
Or dealt with the wealth of performance problems and random crashes caused by that "mature" product, Outlook?
Most of the people I know (including myself) would dump Exchange/Outlook in a heartbeat if another product came along to mimic the functionality. Microsoft has 2 strikes against it...the admin geeks don't like to administer Exchange/Outlook because of its insatiable appetite for resources (on the client AND server side) and the accounting types don't like it because it's expensive.
Exchange/Outlook is a steaming pile when it comes to cost and maintenance, but the end user loves it. The first person/company to crack this nut is going to be wealthy.
Cheers,
man ulimit
Seriously, how can it kill Outlook when there are no Binaries for Windows... or Mac... or anything else besides Linux?
I just wish that getting it to put Sent Items on the IMAP server was a matter of a checkbox instead of a huge pile of rules. I use 100% IMAP. I don't want to see Outlook's own Inbox and stuff, only what's on the server. Outlook's local Inbox is also the cause of confusion for many end users that try to use it as an IMAP client. "Where's my mail? It's all gone!" they scream, when in fact they were just checking the wrong "Inbox."
Just a few little quirks like that...
yes, it does actually
As I read through /. today, most of the comments on this story are along the party line of, "But, it can't do all that outlook can." I'd be surprised if any of the nay-sayers have started a project, or decided not to start their own pet project, because someone else already made an idea similar to their own.
Microsoft is the reigning champion of office email via Outlook. So what! Who cares?!
Isn't the OSS movement about supplying tools that everyone can use via the GPL? If it's not then what the hell have we all been doing since 1991?
The point being we're supposed to be championing the development of open source software for use by the masses and saying goodbye to the monolithic monopolies that have a veritible stranglehold on alternative software.
I say, "hurrah!" to this development. Will it be the best suite available? Not right away, for sure. But give it time. Damn - gotta start somewhere.
As the article states, this is about Mozilla chewing at M$'s heels. (TBird and SBird v. Outlook)
But, I feel compelled to (cowardly and anonymously) piont out something.
Price.
How much is Outlook? (well, alright, M$ Office? I had to get Word and Excel etc..)
How much is ThunderBird? Mozilla Calendar?
Sure, there may not be all the offerings of Outlook 2003, but the $ is right for now. And in the future... who knows?
Now the _OTHER_ Outlook, Outook Express. Compare that. RSS, nope. Add-on calendar (even personal), nope. Hey, there's a newsreader! But big deal.
For security, FLEXIBILITY, adaptability, ABILITY, where you gunna turn? Thunderbird. (price is right too)
Hey, if you want to pay for and use Outlook, knock yourself out. It has improved greatly over the years. But so will, I suspect, Thunderbird. $ for $ though... I'll stick with TB and FF.
I'm just an insensitive clod anyway.
I use a PPC, and I keep my contacts in outlook. Unless you can use those same contacts , I ain't switching.
And no I ain't interested in putting linux on my PPC either.
I think its a bit more complex than that. Notes using organisations tend to fall into three categories:
The first group are only committed by the cost of migration and the unfortunate bits of the UI are a reason to leave.
The third group are leaving Notes.
The members of the second group are slowly converting themselves into the third group.
Although Notes is a very good product in some senses, unless the Notes developers do something about categories one and three they will become irrelevant.
MS has really good education discounts, the prices you received are not indicitive of the prices a corporation would receive.
having said that you have only quoted the exchange part. The grandparent was talking about project and project server as well as many other products MS offers. As I said why not price project and project server for 4000 employees and post it here. Add to that office, SQL server, and the rest of the products the grandparent talked about.
Finally 1000K + 5K per month is an insane amount to spend on email and calendering for 4K people especially when there are free and low cost alternatives. Almost all the school districts in my state are flat out broke it seems like an awful waste of taxpayers money to throw away that kind of money.
evil is as evil does
If only lightning can zap the shit out of outlook. It would TRULY give a reason to rename outlook to "LOOOOK-OUUUT!!!"
When lightning strikes... RUN!
When lightning strikes TWICE...
Now, if only Lightning is built with a targetting system.... and knows how to strike repeatedly, on and around the target.
This would give a new meaning to "Electric Light Orchestra"... Turn the "song and dance" of ms' tap dance into a ZAP Dance...
DANCE! DANCE...
Anyone care to contribute to Lightning any "Dial-and-Zap" code?
(lower-casing/deprecation of ms' wearisome name intentional/perpetual with me...)
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Serious companies are not allowing employees to sync PDAs to corporate networks.
With the capacities on these gadgets nowadays somebody can walk out of the door with the company's crown jewells on their shirtpocket.
As expected, Outlook and Exchange are, yet again, a liability.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
3. Never underestimate the power of PDA syncing. One poster claims that the only people who care about this are executives. That alone is enough to warrant a site license of Outlook. What IT staff would commit suicide by not giving the execs PDA syncing? In reality, PDA syncing is used by many more than the execs, unless you count college students, IT professionals, cops, and teachers as executives.
In serious companies nobody (and that includes execs) can sync their PDAs with the corporate network (unless there is an additional layer of security based in a dynamic password in the PDA).
Serious IT staff are able to explain the dangers of connecting random gadgetery to a corporate network, clued up execs understand the reasons and adapt to the restrictions as everybody else has to do, they lead by example.
Clued up execs (which exist, really) don't go in ego trips for mundane things lika PDA syncing...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Nah. Not unless they have something of substance and not just artificial download numbers to try and get people to switch (like they tried with Firefox).
I'm using Firefox 1.0 and when I right-clicked the navigation toolbar and chose "customize", there was a mail icon available. I dragged it to the toolbar and now have a button which spawns Thunderbird. I have installed a bunch of extensions, so I'm not sure if this button was in the default set or not.
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx