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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."
I made the move a long time ago on my Windows machine from Outlook to Eudora, but after looking at the image comparison I think I might switch to some open alternative. Especially judging how easy the configuration appears to be on the open alternatives. Good to see that the interfaces are starting to look fairly standardized.
I like eye candy. I spend most of the day, most days sat staring at my monitor, so I want what's on it to look as pleasing as possible.
That said, I also want my software to work well. So in any comparison of groupware clients, I need two questions answered:
1) What is the speed like accessing mail on an Exchange server?
2) Does it fully integrate with Exchange's calendaring?
I ask 1) because my company uses Exchange, and in the past I've tried KMail and Mozilla Mail, and both were sluggish as hell accessing my mail. I'm impatient, I don't *want* to wait.
I ask 2) because several years ago, use of the Exchange calendaring feature was mandated. That's how you book meetings, that's how you're told you've been booked to attend a meeting (and some people don't bother speaking to you about it!), you're even supposed to mark time spent away from your desk on holiday or even at lunch, so people know you're not there. If the alternative groupware clients can't do all this with Exchange, then I can't use them.
Exchange is part of the reason I switched back to Windows. Sure, I could run Linux, but to access my mail (acceptably) and calendar (at all) I had to use Outlook, and that meant wasting resources running VMWare. (I also, personally, found XP more aesthetically pleasing than Mandrake 9, but that's purely subjective)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It only seems like the normal thing because most Open Source coders look at something that already exists, and try to mirror its functionality. This is a great example of it.
As for the marketplace, the iPod's interface was design genius, and is it's sole link to fame. Stealing the interface of an iPod is stealing the iPod. The same shouldn't be said for software; the interface and the application should be two very seperate tools. That way, you can use whatever interface you like, and nobody complains. Like Linux, for example.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
As far as im concerned I just use Thunderbird as a newsreader. Google nailed it dead on, when they designed Gmail i think they quite possibly found one of those lofty pinacles that so few programs ever manage to perch on where theres an overwhelming majority that agree wethere they use it or not that it has a superior design. But thats just me ;)
Gmail responds faster over my net connection than Thunderbird does and the UI is near perfect. and i am NEVER going to be happy without groups again. theyre a think of absoloute genius. I just wish i could flag my files like that for Google Desktop Search.
there is definatly room for Innovation. Shame that theres so little. But there has to be a "norm" for people or else everyone would give up cause no to things would be alike at all, and using a new program would take valuable time away from people that genuinely use these kinds of programs as buisness tools regardless of how much computer skill they have.
XML - A clever joke would be here if
Frankly, the way that OSX does it works for me. Tightly coupled yet separate mail, calendar, address book, etc. Each app does what it does really really well.
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*not guaranteed
I've used applications such as Evolution when I used Linux in the past but in reality it felt to me just like a cheap clone of Outlook with fewer features.
Recently however, I have been using Thunderbird on one of my systems as I am loath to purchase two licenses for MS Office and I've come to like it quite a lot and for someone who isn't looking to spend any more or for whatever reason requires free (as in speech) software I think it's an ideal application. It has junk mail handling which while I haven't had to use it myself, have read it can be quite effective. My one gripe with it is that setting up rules and filtering doesn't seem to be as easy as with Outlook and the user has to enter in any filters manually - ie, I can't click a few buttons to have mail from a certain email address go into a specific folder the way I can in Outlook, or at least if you can I've not found it yet.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
Or does Windows not do any anti-aliasing? Looking at the screen shots side-by-side, it doesn't look as though anti-aliasing is turned on for windows. On the windows box I use at work, I've tried turning on 'font smoothing', and it in many cases makes fonts look worse. Has anyone else noticed this?
That said, it would have been nice to see a features side-by-side. Also, one thing Outlook has on its side is how many things out there syncronize with it, like yahoo contact/calendering, for example. Does Evolution syncronize with palms? Just curious.
And the Gimp is equally FULLY SUPPORTED in Windowze, I can see you are just flamebaiting... ask the people who made the Gimp how much "more" they support The Gimp for windows and for Linux
This isn't true. The GIMP's primary developers all work on *nix and they design the UI around the common X11 window managers. This actually causes lots of complaints by GIMP users on Windows, because the X11 window managers are more sophisticated and featureful than Windows' is, and the result makes the GIMP UI behave badly on Windows. Most of the common complaints about the GIMP UI are problems only on the Windows version.
The GIMP's developers don't care, though, because they develop for X11, and it works just fine there.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
This may be nitpicking, but it's clear that Outlook is still far more evolved than the other two shown here.
On the surface, the screenshots look identical. But, being an Outlook user for over 5 years now, I can tell you a few things that appear to be missing from those competitors that are reasons I love Outlook.
1) I don't see Notes or Journal options in Evo.
2) I see no evidence that Evo or Kontact let you group your folder items by from/date/sender/subject/etc.
3) Can you automatically format items based on rules? What if I want emails from my boss to show up in red?
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?
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.
6) I'm sure Kontact has HTML email editing, I just don't see the toolbar buttons.
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.
8) I cannot tell if, in Calendar, you can configure the times to display multiple time zones when you are travelling.
9) It does not look like you can assign colorful labels to your Calendar events. This feature is priceless!
10) Do the other programs let you view multiple Calendars (like that of another user) side-by-side?
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.
12) The implementation of Recurrening Appointments on Evo would drive business people insane.
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.
14) Can you assign Tasks to other users? Get progress reports?
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.
Maybe these things are not missing, but I couldn't see them from the screenshots.
Further, the screenshots only show the things that are nearly identical in all three versions. That is pretty low. There isn't even any sample data to show how things like Contacts are formatted in the Contact View. It's as if the author knew of the shortcomings in those programs and didn't want to display them.
-David