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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 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!
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.
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!
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.
Yes, I've been blabbering about this since Thunderbird started.
But even then compare what say Evolution offers compared to what Thunderbird offers. See the difference? Thunderbird plus an available addon Calendar which doesn't do half of what Outlook can isn't an Outlook alternative. Its an Outlook Express Alternative that just happens to have a Calendar. Without the back-end server to allow for all of Outlook's features I just don't see the point in calling it an Outlook killer. That's just wishful thinking for people who know nothing about the business world and Outlook/Exchange installs.
I do think that an Email client that allows you to see other peoples calendars and make changes etc would be nice. No doubt basic email and very basic scheduling would be nice to have and find a home in some small offices. But for people who are already using Outlook/Exchange I can't possibly see them dumping that for this solution.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
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.
-no exchange compatability
-no calander sharing
-no contact sharing
-no sharepoint integration
-no office integration
-no PocketPC syncing
Conclusion: My company needs outlook.
If you use more then email then you need outlook, plain and simple. There is no single app that can replace everything that we use outlook for.
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 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.
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.