UPDATEI could not think of the name of the software last night, but Calypso 3 is the only other email client I have found on Windows worth its salt. Its really nice and I used it for a while but got irritated at things like the quarky address book.
Jake makes a good point (read the comments) about how Office for the Mac was a pile. Office 4.2.1 _shudder_ Word 6 and Excel 5 _shudder_. Office 2001 (where Entourage first popup up) was good and as Jake sais Office X "is a work of art."
Outlook is not perfect but its pretty close and the best thing out there for Windows. If someone wants to show me a better solution then please do.
ORIGINALI used to use M$ Entourage for my email (before that all I used PINE and Eudora). I was tempted to switch to OS X Mail when 10.2 shipped, but didn't. I stuck with Entourage. It is such a well put together email client, not to mention a good PIM that made Palm Desktop unneeded. Just to clarify: Entourage is the full featured PIM bundled with Office for the Mac like Outlook is the bundled PIM with Office for Windows.
I guess I made the mistake of thinking that M$ Outlook XP would be much better then Entourage. I was wrong. Its no secret that I think that Outlook is inferior to Entourage. The main reason I do not like using Outlook is the fact that it hides things three or four windows, clicks, deep. There are numerous things that I think are buried deep in dialog boxes, but today I am focusing on just one: Internet Headers.
There are many reasons you might want to look at the Internet Headers of an email. That would be this junk for those among us who have not yet been initiated:
Return-Path: <---@---.edu>
Received: from localhost by ---.edu with LMTP for <---@---.edu>; Tue, 27 May 2003 11:39:55 -0400
Received: from ---.edu (---.edu [129.1.5.18])
by ---.edu (Switch-2.2.6/8.11.1) with ESMTP id h4RFdtm04585
for <---@---.edu>; Tue, 27 May 2003 11:39:55 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from ---.edu (---.edu [129.1.5.20])
by ---.edu (Switch-2.2.6/Switch-2.2.6) with SMTP id h4RFdt919411;
Tue, 27 May 2003 11:39:55 -0400 (EDT)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Reply-To: ---@---.edu
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 11:39:55 -0500
From: "Ken Edwards" <---@---.edu>
Message-Id: <---@---.edu>
To: "Ken Edwards" <---@---.edu>
Cc: ---@---.com
Subject: killer web site
X-Filtered: Sendmail MIME Filter v2.3.1 ---.edu h4RFdt919411
X-AntiVirus: Sendmail Anti-Virus Filter ---.edu 4.1.60 4266 h4RFdt919411
X-Text-Classification: real
X-POPFile-Link:
(Yes I took out the addresses, domains, and link from POPFile-Link, I get enough SPAM as it is I do not need a bot picking up my email addy any more than already happens thankyouverymuch)
My latest reason for wanting to look at Internet Headers is because I am looking into setting up SpamAssasin on my server. I have it available to me, so I might as well use it. Just for reference, POPFile tells me that 83% of the mail I get is SPAM. If I can setup SpamAssasin to bounce SPAM, I am all for it.
In Entourage I would go to the View menu and select Internet Headers (or something very similar, don't quote me on that, I do not even have Entourage installed anymore, and I am not about to take the time to install it just for this post.) If I click on the View menu in Outlook I do not get options for the selected email. I get View options for the application itself, such as the different panes to view. In Outlook you have to open up the email, double click on it, then
that View menu has options for that email. Why make Outlook the odd man out in email client software? That's an easy one: because its Microsoft.
OK now I've got this email open in a new window. But alas there is no View > Internet Headers. There is View > Message Header which hides/shows information like the subject line. That's clever. You need to go to View > Options... to open up the Message Options dialog box to be able to see the Internet Headers. Why would you make this very simple process so dang complicated. In OS X Mail and in Entourage (and Eudora I believe) you can select a message from your inbox (without opening it), go the to View menu, and toggle Internet Headers on. It also displays those headers in the preview pane. Outlook displays the Internet Headers in a field of the Message Options dialog box.
I guess what my main beef here is that View > Internet Headers, or hell even View > Options... is a level deep. It cannot be accessed from the main inbox view. You need to open up the email in a seperate window.
What if I right click on a message in my inbox? Surely they would have put a View Message Headers option in the context menu. Nope. It is the same deal. Go to Options... which opens the Message Options dialog.
I come from a Mac background and am not used to right clicking
everything in sight like Windows folks are. I do however use contextual menus and keyboard shortcuts a lot. But the idea of a context menu is to be secondary as well as be in context to the object you are clicking. The keyword there is
secondary.
I know it's not going to work like a Mac, and I know that the MacBU and the Windows Office team are separate developers but why make so many things buried in Outlook XP in comparison to essentially the same product on the Mac. It is almost as if Windows users are used to the complexity of it all.
