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Outlook, Evolution and Kontact Side-by-Side
gaijincory writes "Opensourceversus.com has put together a nice side-by-side comparison of Microsoft Outlook, Evolution and KDE's Kontact groupware programs. The screenshots delve in to the nitty gritty details and should help in making an informed choice, if nothing else. This is a follow up to their comparison of the Outlook Express and Thunderbird e-mail clients."
These guys also did Windows and Linux comparisons which make for good viewing.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
Well, it does give us an idea of how both clients work.
"In Outlook, you can do this, and it works just like this in Evolution. See, look at the screenshots, it's easy."
All of the other factors (security, spam filtering, etc) are in the comments at the end of the page.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
2G is about where Outlook irreparably damages your mailbox,
Care to provide some evidence of this?
How about http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=288283
Quote: "Offline files (.ost) are limited to approximately 2GB in size. The is the same limitation as a personal folders (.pst) file. "
You should have a look at Evolution:
v olution.html
Built-in Microsoft Exchange Support
Users can communicate directly with built-in WebDAV support, eliminating the need to maintain separate IMAP e-mail server access to support Linux and UNIX users.
From within Novell Evolution, users can view, edit and update e-mail, address books, calendars and task folders on the Exchange server.
Using existing global address lists, users can access names, addresses and contact information from the Exchange Global Address List.
Public folder support allows users to share documents and files in existing Exchange public folders. They can also create new public folders for collaboration.
Through the Manage Permissions feature, users can control access to personal and public folders, calendars and task lists.
With the proper authorization, users can open other users' calendars or shared folders.
The Out-of-Office Assistant helps users create custom vacation or notification messages that run on the Exchange server.
Through the Calendar Delegation feature, users can set permissions to allow others to view their calendars. Users can also delegate permission to a colleague (for example, an administrative assistant) to accept and schedule meetings in their calendars.
Direct resource booking reserves resources such as conference rooms or vehicles for your meetings and appointments.
The new mailbox- and folder-size features display Exchange server quota notifications to keep mailbox sizes down.
Taken from http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/features/e
As for question 1 & 2 I'm not quite sure, but a colleague uses it, and it looks like he accesses his mail without trouble (And accepts meeting requests, Accesses public folder, etc.).
I think maybe you've been a little harsh on Evo, which is generally a very nice and solid email client. I'll look at a few of your points here.
"There is a 3 second pause on my computer between clicking "New Mail" and the window appearing."
Yes, the first time you click the new button, there can be a small pause. However, it is near instantaneous with every subsequent click.
"There is no *simple* way of changing the date format (mm/dd/yy -> dd/mm/yy which europeans prefer)"
I have it dd/mm/yy as default on my system. Might I suggest looking at your country settings? I have a feeling that you might be running American localisation.
"There is no sensible simple mail notification."
This is correct. However, as you are using Gnome, there are a myriad of new mail applets that you can use to help fill this gap.
"The junk mail filter is crap."
This seems odd. IIRC, Evolution uses spam assasin which is very highly regarded in the open source community. I have had excellent results after a week of training it. Are you remembering to tell it what is and isn't spam?
"almost all modern spell-checking applications offer suggestions in a context menu"
This is just design ethos. I actually think the window works a little better as it offers more flexibility with the spell checking - for example, I can choose to use a different directory to look at the offending word if I need to.
"New Junk is not marked as unread."
Junk is junk, and goes in the junk folder. Surely you delete junk from the junk folder after you've checked it for a false positive? I'm not sure why you would want to hold on to reams of spam - perhaps the problem here is the way you use email rather than the client itself.
"Sending a mail twice takes a whole load of inelegant cutting and pasting."
No it doesn't. Locate the email in your sent folder. Double-click it. Choose "Edit as new message" from the actions menu.
"There is no way to automatically fetch mail immediately after startup"
This is correct. However, if you set your email to automatically check every minute, you get your email automatically just 60 seconds after startup. Besides, you've manually intervened to start Evolution up in the first place, so why not take the extra step of clicking "Send/Receive"?
"You HAVE to specify a mail server in the Evo startup wizard."
Duh! Where else is your email going to come from?
I hope that a few of my suggestions will help you reevaluate Evolution. I am forced to use Outlook on a daily basis at work, and believe me, Evolution knocks it into a cocked hat, especially for the power user!
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
You seem to have touble with people who present facts.
I have had Outlook screw me over with the 2GB limit twice now. I know, I should have seen it coming the second time, but a mail loop from a fax server can really ruin your day.
PST files are another MS "filesystem in a file" format. When a PST file reaches 2GB, Outlook tries to add more data, but the internal file pointer wraps. Two pieces of data with the same pointer value and things go to shit quickly.
These days, Outlook recognises the fact it's done it and tells you. Previously it just happily went around overwriting data.
For more details, check out The MS KB.
-- I like the cut of your thinking, young man. - me.
It seems to work fine as long as I'm continually using it, but if I leave it alone for a while (say, at night) Evolution seems to forget what to do. It stops keeping my folders up-to-date and I have to switch to a different folder then back to my Inbox to get an accurate view.
I have not figured out how to access my public folders. I can see them but I can't do anything with them.
I don't understand why they didn't implement the "check names" button. It is in OWA and Entourage, so it shouldn't be complicated to add.
1) I don't see Notes or Journal options in Evo.
I think you're right here, it doesn't have any.
2) I see no evidence that Evo or Kontact let you group your folder items by from/date/sender/subject/etc.
Evolution supports virtual folders that can do this.
3) Can you automatically format items based on rules? What if I want emails from my boss to show up in red?
Yes, just create a new filter rule, filter for your boss being the sender, and as the action to perform select "assign color".
4) Is there a rules manager so I can also automatically do things with incoming emails? Delete them, send a reply, file in a folder, etc?
Yes.
5) I don't see that you can just straight to a contact from anywhere in the program by typing their partial name in the toolbar.
Correct.
6) I'm sure Kontact has HTML email editing, I just don't see the toolbar buttons.
As I've said before, I can't speak about Kontact. Evolution has those buttons, but I don't know anyone who'd want to receive HTML email...
7) Contacts don't appear to let you add your own fields (corporate users love this!). Nor do I see a gigantic Notes field or support for Journaling.
You're right, this neat feature is missing. There's a "notes" field, though, but it's well hidden on the bottom of the "Personal Information" tab.
8) I cannot tell if, in Calendar, you can configure the times to display multiple time zones when you are travelling.
Correct, Evolution supports only one time zone at a time.
9) It does not look like you can assign colorful labels to your Calendar events. This feature is priceless!
Correct. This feature is missing. Makes me wonder why, since it should be easy to implement...
10) Do the other programs let you view multiple Calendars (like that of another user) side-by-side?
Yes.
11) Can you schedule appointments with other users at all? If you can, I don't see the field to do it, and I certainly don't see how you can see their schedule.
You can certainly do it. I've never used this feature, as I use Evolution only at home.
12) The implementation of Recurrening Appointments on Evo would drive business people insane.
I Agree with you, the implementation is somewhat lacking. E.g. you can only define exceptions on a per-day basis, which is really annoying.
13) It doesn't look like Evo has enough fields to support a proper ToDo list. I don't even see a Due Date field.
Of course it has a due date field, and a start date field, too, and plenty of others. Which other fields are you missing?
14) Can you assign Tasks to other users? Get progress reports?
I think so. A comment field in the status tab might come in handy, there's only a status, percentage completed, and priority. But you can enter a link to a website and (ab-)use that for additional comments.
15) None of the screenshots demonstrate how configurable either program is. Sure, you can edit the source, but I'm talking about the Average User. Outlook is right-click customizable like crazy.
You can't customize very much in Evolution. It's a gnome program after all, and as we all know the gnome people don't believe in customizability of every tiny aspect, but concentrate on usability out of the box.
Maybe these things are not missing, but I couldn't see them from the screenshots.
I think we all agree that screenshots alone are not a good means for comparing programs. They give far too little information.
If that was your point, you could have said that in less words. And if you wanted to tell us how far superior Outlook is, you should have done at least some research about the alternatives. While I agree that there are still many features missing, you were wrong on a substancial number...