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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.
How comes copying GUIs, look and feel and functionality of software is seen as a normal thing while people go mad about copied Ipods etc?
I don't see how three almost identical screenshots(of each piece of functionality) actually gives you enough information to make a choice.
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.
The problem is that there are two groups arguing here, and often members are interchangable depending on the specific case. Group A wants innovation and less copying, to attract users. Group B wants everything to look like a commercial product to attract users. The problem is that Group B wins out hands down in the intial run, because most people out there want something that looks and feels familiar to them. If corporations are to take up linux on the desktop, you can bet they are going to go with something that looks and acts a whole lot like microsoft. Group A can get it's way when people have adopted the software philosophy, because they are then more open to trying new things that could potentialy be better than what they are used to.
stuff
Recent security issues in open source products have convinced me that obscurity provided by closed source is far superior security-wise.
:)
You're not a VBS virus writer, by any chance?
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
I'm pretty happy with evolution except for one "features"
Deleting a message takes you to the next message, it doesn't close the window.
This doesn't make any sense to me, and there is no option to fix it. The developers seem to think this is the correct behaviour.
Does anyone know of an equivalent mail program that solves that problem?
Gmail is the perfect example of what can be done for the interface of an email client, even if it is only web only. Content groups, filtering, integrating search technologies, etc.
iCal is another good example, even if it doesn't seem it. It's simple enough for anyone to pick up and understand in minutes, and is compatible enough to work with the open source programs out there that do the same thing. Plus it gives you a lot of room and leeway to do what you want to do with it, such as RSS-like calendar feeds, which was all defined in the standard it was written to project.
Calendaring and email systems in my opinion are the worst programs out there in interface, which is why I stay with separate, very down to earth solutions for both. If a calendaring program could do good group management, automatically set up my contact groups based on who emails me, build social nets, etc etc, I'd switch to it in a heart beat. But these carbon clones of Outlook aren't helping me as a software consumer, which means there is virtually no incentive for me to switch to Open Source.
God forbid anyone thing that Open Source authors learn something about design instead of functionality. That's the difference between Software Engineers and Code Monkeys.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
A comparision side by side of the features of all these programmes. Can I handle my 2 Gb of PST files with Evolution and Kontact? If not, then I'm not interested. Can I search pretty quickly? If not, forget it.
Can I connect to POP3 / IMAP / Exchange / Notes servers? If not, come back when I can. Integration with calendar requests from MS Exchange and Lotus Notes? I think that is very necessary.
This sort of eyecandy is very nice to look at, but utterly useless.
If you're stuck on Windows still, then Eudora is probably the best way to go. I'd pay for a Linux version if they had one. Though many others I know also like Thunderbird
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
The problem is that there are two groups arguing here, and often members are interchangable depending on the specific case. Group A wants innovation and less copying, to attract users. Group B wants everything to look like a commercial product to attract users. The problem is that Group B wins out hands down in the intial run, because most people out there want something that looks and feels familiar to them. If corporations are to take up linux on the desktop, you can bet they are going to go with something that looks and acts a whole lot like microsoft. Group A can get it's way when people have adopted the software philosophy, because they are then more open to trying new things that could potentialy be better than what they are used to.
The problem is that Group A and Group B can both be a single group, if we chose to go that route instead.
Nothing is really stopping us from making Commercial-grade software. The dependent libraries are there. The potential for eye candy is there. The implementation code is there. What we need is design.
When you look at any product, absolutely anything out there, you are presented with choice. For example, the difference between a Segway and a Moped. The Moped was designed to do a very specific task, as simple as possible, and to look something like the little brother to a motorcycle. The Segway was designed to do everything a Moped can do, but to give you better flexability with what you want to do with it.
The problem with Group A+B is that it's a lot of work to get both implementation and design working, and nobody wants to do it for free. Anyone can code a copy to something in a given set of time. It takes a set mount of time, plus probably even two times that to draw out and design your interface, figure out its weaknesses and strengths, do comparisons, etc. That's why the Segway still costs four times that of a good Moped.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Obscurity is a powerful factor in security that shouldnt be overlooked :P
*from one who is trying to build a totaly transparent VAX emulation enviroment on OpenBSD
Up with the VAX! The Most Obscure of All!
XML - A clever joke would be here if
No. I think if a code author writes code just to be writing it, he's a code monkey, reinventing the wheel.
A software engineer spends his or her time researching as well as implementing. For most Open Source authors, researching encompasses a Google search coming up blank. Now I'm not saying all of them are. There are a lot of good authors out there, creating things that I could have never dreamed up. But the problem is, these people are good engineers, and often are gulped up into companies like Microsoft for example, which has its margins, which means you do it their way, or its the highway.
If something really sucks, then that's an example of poor design, which means that the engineer did a poor job researching the situation.
Email clients are notoriously hard to get right. They've got to deal with a lot of information coming in, and try to process it in a way that it's useful, hopefully without cluttering the whole world up with useless buttons and scroll bars and chrome. But if you sit down and point out what's important in a mail client (the MAIL perhaps?) and think of how to represent it in a clear, concise way, then you quickly start getting ideas of how to implement it, and you can quickly go through those ideas, choosing which are good, and which are crap. I swear I don't think most of the code developers I know ever go through this step. They just look at something that exists, and clone it. And that's what I'm against.
"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
A young man goes into a computer games shop. He says to an assistant
"I want a challenging computer game with lots of graphics. It should be
difficult, confusing and have plenty of contradictions to keep me busy".
The assistant replies "Have you tried Windows XP?"
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Simple: it's the law. The specific appearance of the iPod can be protected by design patents and its wheel thingy has a device patent on it. In contrast, the general arrangement of buttons and menus in an application cannot be protected.
Having said that, it doesn't bother me in the least if other companies clone iPod in any way they like.
Open Source projects are broader than KDE, Gnome and Mozilla.
Get out and look around, what you see might surprise you, but then don't start bitching that it doesn't have the interface you're used to.
In the meantime what the majority of users want is a Linux mirror of what they're already used to, not innovation.
Innovation itself is highly overated anyway. What you really want is what works, tweak it only when real improvement results and otherwise leave it the bloody hell alone, but you can't keep a revenue stream of new sales to old customers going that way.
KFG
The problem is that there are two groups arguing here
There are plenty of innovative user interfaces in open source in general, and open source mail readers in particular.
This particular article happens to focus on two open source systems that have a goal of being intuitive to Outlook users, but there are plenty of other systems.
Group A can get it's way when
Group A and Group B aren't in conflict. They both get their way whenever they want. Each group develops what they think is important and users choose.
God forbid anyone thing that Open Source authors learn something about design instead of functionality. That's the difference between Software Engineers and Code Monkeys.
You're confused about the role of a software engineers; they don't know anything about (user interface) design.
But these carbon clones of Outlook aren't helping me as a software consumer, which means there is virtually no incentive for me to switch to Open Source.
What makes you think that anybody cares whether you use open source software?
Because none of the others can do what I want them to do.
From the contact management screenshots ("new contact"), it looks like one would mainly use Evolution for keeping in touch with janitors.
Possibly "with other janitors" (the user is a janitor), or at most managing them.
The screenshots delve in to the nitty gritty details and should help in making an informed choice, if nothing else
...Outlook somehow manages to shine compared to the other two.
No the screenshots show some dude with one email account and one contact.
Even if this is to be just a UI comparison, there isn't much here to compare, really is there?
Given it (as advertised) only scratches the surface, and from the surface they all look pretty much the same... the screenshots hardly allow for an informed decision.
I've looked into all of these in some detail, although to be fair none of OSS offerings in some time. I hate to say it, but when you have 1000s of contacts, a pile email accounts (of both imap and pop), and the shit hits the fan (ie, bad server, bad connection, heavily loaded client machine)..
At the last indepth trial of non-Outlook groupware I just kept finding things missing from the other applications. Usually little things, like being able to group email a certain way, or create filters for one thing or another. Stupid little things I'd admit, things I normally wouldn't care about, but to be honest 100% of my usage for this sort of thing is for work.
That said, when all is going well, and the server is fine, and the connection is fast, somehow, outlook manages to shit it pants at random though infrequent intervals. To be honest, Outlook's ability to import and export to / from other sources is a bit weak and possibly worring (how will I get all these email attachments back out when I finally jump ship)
I'd be happy to switch to another system provided it did a better job than Outlook (*shudder*) I feel so dirty.
umm .. sorry, but SO WHAT?
would it have been so hard to have actually used each one of these programs a bit first? a visual comparison is USELESS without DATA!
those screenshots are mostly whitespace. beh!!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
One (and only one) thing seems obvious to me from the screenshots :
;)
Windows is the more eye-catching with it's bright, saturated blue.
Are screenshots using gnome and kde current versions default looks ? I have debian gnome 2.8.3 and KDE 3.3.2 so I haven't the same defaults - however I've switched kde look to "plastic", that's the default in 3.4 and less widows-ish/ playskool-ish than kde previous default.
Gnome and KDE pastel colors are easier on the eyes.
Now about the applications... From the thumbnails, they're all the same with different skins, right ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Screenshots make not a review young padawan.
That said... can we have a REAL review of speed, features, functionality? Screenshots just show me that I can get something that LOOKS like Outlook without paying for it -- but how good is it? I stopped using Outlook since I got gMail, but I'd still like to know.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
>>Stealing the interface of an iPod is stealing the iPod.
Stealing the interface of Outlook is stealing Outlook.
I have a lot more respect for Apple (for Address Book and iCal) and OSAF (for Chandler) for their attempts at an "Outlook Killer" than I do for these two examples.
In the late 1990s, I was using Day Timer Organizer. It was essentially an electronic version of their paper organizer. For what it was, I thought it rocked... I switched to Outlook because of the integration between contacts and email (and it was on my new computer). In other words, I switched for a functionality.
>>most Open Source coders look at something that already exists, and try to mirror its functionality.
I think your comment does a disservice to Open Source coders that _don't_ do that. The real heroes are the ones that create an entirely new take on an existing problem. They're the ones who are pushing the envelope and they get my respect, open or closed.
My father is a blogger.
Have they by any chance done a tabular list of the exploits for each? This would be quite useful for comparison also.
Why UNIX?
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
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.).
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 this is why Linux is years from the corporate desktop.
I think evolution is a stone-age Email client. I am actually a KDE user but since using ububtu I decided to give gnome a try and was very impressed, until I migrated all my mail to evolution. I did this because I wanted a PIM suite that will allow me to sync with a mobile at some stage in the future.
Anyway, swicthing from KMail to Evolution really is taking several large steps backwards. Here's why:
a) Evolution is slow. There is a 3 second pause on my computer between clicking "New Mail" and the window appearing. This is not the case when the same machine is using KMail or Outlook.
b) There is no *simple* way of changing the date format (mm/dd/yy -> dd/mm/yy which europeans prefer). I believe it can be done via shell variables, but come on, Evo is supposed to be a proper GUI application.
c) There is no sensible simple mail notification. There is a "beep" option which is inaudible and some other useless / highly complex hacks. In Kmail you can specify whether new mail triggers a notification *per folder*, all via the GUI and without obscure shell scripts.
d) The junk mail filter is crap. I trained it on a folder of 1000 spams but still it doesn't seem to recognise half of them. And I have "external check" enabled. KMail uses external spam filters in a transparent way.
e) Spell checking: almost all modern spell-checking applications offer suggestions in a context menu when opened over a misspelt word. In Evo you have to open an extra window.
f) New Junk is not marked as unread. This would be nice so that you know what junk you've checked for false positives and which you haven't.
g) Sending a mail twice takes a whole load of inelegant cutting and pasting. See KMail for the elegant solution.
i) There is no way to automatically fetch mail immediately after startup. See KMail and Outlook.
j) You HAVE to specify a mail server in the Evo startup wizard. There is no way of getting around this. Very annoying.
k) The calenders feature is not too hot either. I only ever use the whole-month-view and when I scroll through the months it takes ages. Outlook was 10 times more responsive. And the default colour scheme means that looking for today's date is a real eye strainer.
These are just my views on evolution. I had always heard that it was such an excellent PIM suite and am dissapointed that it simply doesn't live up to the hype.
I don't understand why managing email should be linked with a calendar. I beleive they are two separate functions. If you try to do both at the same time you loose productivity. Try using mutt versus any other MUA. I've found nothing faster for managing large amounts of email. Now if only I could find a calendar system that is just as efficient.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Great help for the savvy grandma in picking a mail client. Unfortunately, the rest of the computing world who deals in business has to choose based on functionality and interoperability, and no ammount of smooth GUI trumps connecting to Exchange.
OS groupware will continue to be mostly fruitless until some real focus is placed on that goal. I could actually consider an Outlook alternative, even lacking some of Outlook's foofoo features, if it played well with Exchange.
Promote civility: mod down any post starting with 'ummm'.
What sort of useless garbage is that? No functional review? No comments? Nothing?
If you choose your applications purely on 'eye-candy' value, you are an idiot.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
why does everyone want to make everything GUI look like MS Win, when there is an opportunity not to?
;-) And yes, I think that copying IS good.
If there is a proven way, why bother? I'd personally choose familiarity and conveniency over "innovation". Besides, as a coder, you can copy GUI design and concentrate on the things you like - namely, coding
I know this sounds trollish, but... About all this "review" showed me was that Gnome is ugly as hell. I read TFA, and I agree with someone earlier: "screenshots do not a review make."
Hey, what about the fact that both OS clients are available to only a tiny portion of the market?
All those people who need an alternative to Outlook are using Windows.
It's great that these free programs look like Outlook - this will make it much easier and more comfortable for Outlook users to switch - but please port them to Windows.
Unfortunatly they dont show any of the innovation of kmail. Like integrated Gnupg/PGP support, that is color coded, green header and footer if the key is good. It will automatically sign using GnuPG and or encrypt the message if you have a key assigned to that email address. It makes using GnuPG seemless.
;)
retail price on outlook is $109US
They don't show industrial strength spam filter plug-ins as an option in kmail. They are automatically detected on your system if they are installed. You check a few boxes and have spam protection.
Maybe they didn't offer screenshots on these "sad features" because microsoft has not "innovated" them yet.
The other thing they did not cover is price
As a user of both Outlook and Evolution, I am already familiar with the lengths the designers of the latter went to make windows users comfortable visually with their product. Home users will care less about Exchange (assuming they know what it is) than being able to jump in and start using it, especially from scratch on a new machine.
/., and other feeds, plus mail views and tasks... gone are those days, and don't tell me about rss feeds and tickers: they don't have the same impact.
As an Evolution user, I am personally saddenned by the demise of the one thing that it had over Outlook (to me), and that was its start page in version 1.4.x. Configuring it to give me an overview of Linux Today,
For every present, there is a past
Oh YES! Lotus Notes 6.x is great, but only trial version is available for mortals.
Having spent the last couple of months researching and implementing a groupware solution, by way of Toltec Connector for Outlook, I've come to conclusion that right now there is no alternative to Outlook - at least on the Windows platform.
Sure Thunderbird is great, I use it both at home and work, but it has no calendaring support aside from a plugin and Sunbird but they are not mature yet.
Outlook 2002 is terrible because of the 2GB PST file limit is the bane of my existence but Outlook 2003 is a major improvement, both visually and behind the scenes.
Contrary to popular opinion using Outlook doesn't have to equate to buying an Exchange server. There are plenty of commercial plugins like Toltec Connector, Bynari etc that let you use an open source server for the groupware component. Right now I am heading my bets on version 2 of Kolab, which hopefully will let different clients share calendar data.
aus.music.scrapbook
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
Sorry to be an ass, but I want to correct you a bit.
First, copying an stealing is NOT the same. However much people compare them it is not the case. There are two different word for the two actions because they are different. An example: I make a cool shirt, and you copy it. This incident is WAY different than the case where I make a shirt and you steal it. I hope you can see the difference. I know that you talk about stealing the "business concept", but it is not stealing.
I would also like to comment on your last paragraph. I agree that the real heroes are the OS coders that dont mirror existing functionality. But the ones that do are just as much heroes. The people that make OpenOffice are doing just as much good, if not more, than the people that make innovative apps. They give us something we need. There are several reasons to "copy" functionality. First it is a shortcut towards making something that does a job well. Second, it makes it easier to switch/use the apps. These are both good reasons to copy, and it gives us (society) benefits.
Like you say, there are OS coders that do not just mirror other apps, and I think its is pathetic to parrot the claim the OS does not innovate. There are more than enough examples of open source innovation to totally obliterate the claim that OS dont innovate. I would claim that OS innovates more than proprietary sw, because people add the features they want / think is good, and are not constrained by the business side of it. Then the best functionality survives. Its evolution and it works.
Yep, the thread view of emails has made my life much better. Its sad I have to use a webbased mail for my primary company account, but I was getting 50 emails a day in about 10-15 threads. In outlook I had to dig through all the emails. In Gmail, its laid out beautifully and I can make sure to respond to everything.
Yes, I've tried the "view by thread" in Outlook 2003. It sucks
I just wish they'd port Apple Mail to windows. Until then I'll be using Gmail
The choice is simple for me. I can sync the calendar, todos, addressbook and notes on my Sharp Zaurus with Outlook but not with Kontact or Evolution.
If my Zaurus is lost or stolen I can purchase just about any PDA or smartphone on the market and you can be sure it will sync with Outlook and I will be back in action with minimal hassle.
Outlook wins.
Its and Outlook Express replacement. Sorry for the shouting but Thunnderbird offers absolutely nothing for Outlook users. Saying Outlook users should try Thunderbird is like saying MS Word users should use notepad, they both kind of do the same thing but they are in completely different leagues and vastly differ in capability. Evolution is an Outlook replacement, Thunderbird is not.
I highly suggest OE users switch to thunderbird today, but for Outlook users Thunderbird is not a drop-in replacement and should not be suggested as such.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
How about sitting down and trying to make the best email app there is instead of just trying to copy existing ones down to their cosmetic features.
That's been done, plenty of times. Just look at the GIMP. And what do the GIMP developers get for their "innovative interface"? Ridicule and scorn to the effect of "make it look like Photoshop!"
The fact is, people don't want to learn a new interface, even if it's better. They want something that is basically like the interfaces they are used to.
Why do you think VCRs all have the same arrow on the play button? Why do you think the keypad on my Audiovox cell phone has the same buttons on it as my old Nokia?
I had a user tell me last week that the OpenOffice Save button didn't do the same thing it did in Word. He said that Word had a "Save As" button instead, that give you a dialog and a chance to choose a filename. After walking into the next room to show him that Word did, in fact, have the exact same Save button, I switched his button on OpenOffice to have "Save As" instead.
OSS apps can be whatever people want them to be. Most people want them to be similar to the apps they are used to on Windows, even if they don't quite know what that is exactly. In fact, most OSS apps started out with completely different interfaces, and have gradually become more like their Windows counterparts due to exactly these issues.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Hm, that's interesting. Are you asserting they are in different markets? 'Cause, see, they aren't.
Are you asserting that Microsoft's non-distribution doesn't bundle things in to the non-distribution when they want to compete with other software? 'Cause, see, they do.
Sure, 'Linux' means the kernel. There are not, however, very many people who bootstrap their boxes and build their own environments. The market here is for 'software I stick on a box and then the box is useful for something'. Microsoft clearly understands this exceptionally well, and I find it amusing that apologists for them claim not to.
I forget what 8 was for.
Since my employer downgraded to Exchange we have had a major problem with calendar support. Most of the engineers on my floor run Solaris, which vastly limits us in terms of clients compared to even Linux.
Evolution is out of the question. We can't get modern versions of gnome to even compile since some of the required libraries seem hell bent on requiring the X Render extension (which is not supported in the version of Solaris [2.8] we run) and trying to figure out the dependencies seams near impossible.
While I have successfully compiled KDE for many years on Solaris, I had hoped that Kontact would be a good client for Exchange. It is barely functional.
For one, it is unable to pop up a dialog when an event occurs or even make a sound. Apparently this feature only works for locally stored events, not events stored on a remote server, i.e. Exchange.
Second, it cannot properly create new meetings and add other people. When using Outlook or the web interface, calendar events have an embedded URL which is needed for people who do not use Outlook. This is missing in events created by Korganizer. Also, for some reason Outlook does not seem to properly recognize the emails as calendar events.
Third, Korganizer frequently locks up, getting in an endless loop.
These bugs have been reported a long time ago, yet no effort has been made to fix them. I don't see Korganizer gaining wide spread use in the enterprise until Exchange interoperability is fixed. As much as Exchange sucks, it's here to stay.
The address book also seems to have problems with the Exchange LDAP server whereas Thunderbird works.
What is worse for Exchange is that the web interface is not all that useful either, since many operations will only work with Internet Explorer. Many features do not work with Firefox or Konqueror.
I would love these features to be fixed... the most pressing ones being the lockups and popping up a dialog and/or playing a sound when an event occurs (korgac does this, I think).
I will commend the KDE team on the excellent progress they are making on Kmail. While there are still a few areas that need work (i.e. a more integrated spam filter), it has come a long ways.
-Aaron
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Apples to oranges. Thunderbird, unless there's a way to connect it to Sunbird, it's not equivalent to Outlook. The guys that did the test also have a comparison between OE, Thunderbid and I think Kmail
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
I agree that Outlook's "Group by Conversation" view really, really sucks. There's a big, ugly, grey "Group Header" above each thread, which means that if you have a single message, it takes up TWO lines of precious screen space.
Every time I talk to some Outlook guru I ask about this, and they stare at me with a dumb look on their face and ask why would I want to view message threads. !!! They don't even know what they are missing.
What's ironic is that Outlook Express does this correctly. Outlook does not.
This is my #1 complaint about Outlook.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
This site totally sucks. Screenshots don't give a good functional comparison, only a look and feel comparison. It's a troll site designed to provide adspace aimed at people who are dumb enough to come here. It doesn't work well in Firefox, it's best seen in IE (you might see blank spaces or links in Firefox). Don't waste your time going to this site.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
I started with 1.0, then upgraded to 1.2.2. The thing often hangs when fetching email. I get "the email component has unexpectly quit" a lot. Also it takes a very long time to load and the status bar says it's reading in all my stored mailboxes before I've even thought of opening one. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
We don't need yet another new programming language. Let's just pick an existing language and fix its flaws.
They should have done the Opera webrowser, the QUASI-opensource program. It is a commercial company but has an opensource like community (especially cause you can use for free).
As an aside, it would be interesting if Opera went fully opensource someday.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
Try GIMPshop, GIMP with PhotoShop menus.
The first complain I got when swapping Eudora users to Thunderbird (due to an issue Eudora has where it downloads messages from the POP3 server and eats them somehow) was that things were "different." Some of the VP's refused to switch. If they'd been outlook users switching to Evolution, etc it would have been easier because Evolution looks enough like Outlook that they don't have to bend their brain around it.
A lot of people argue that interface copying is a lack of originality. I find that you can make a snazzy interface, but even if it's easier to use for a newbie the existing users are going to bitch and complain that the "F5 key works differently and doesn't do what I expected"...
Innovative, featureful, and easy-to-use interfaces are great to attract newer users.
Interfaces similar in function and design are more useful in grabbing existing users set in their ways. Being that a larger portion of the market uses MS products (either in-company or from users with home experience, or both), quite often they are the ones targetting in UI design.