RSSMicrosoft Rethinks Outlook Express Future
By David Worthington | Published August 14, 2003, 2:54 PM
Microsoft has acknowledged to ZDNet Australia that Outlook Express will soon be cast to Redmond's graveyard of obsolescence. Sustained development teams will continue to issue needed fixes, while the bulk of Microsoft's emphasis in the consumer e-mail space will be directed toward MSN and Hotmail.
Outlook Express has enjoyed years of being tightly bundled with all versions of Windows and standalone downloads of Internet Explorer. The distribution has made Microsoft's freeware e-mail client one of the most pervasive products on the market.
Individuals without the need to interact on a LAN found Outlook Express an ideal alternative to Microsoft's heavier Outlook client that ships with Office. An extensive array of third party utilities grew almost organically as adoption spread across desktops.
Despite its competitive market positioning, Microsoft has equated Outlook Express to an early iteration of its overall consumer strategy. A lead Outlook Express product manager recently told ZDNet, "IMAP is just not a very rich protocol."
Microsoft has instead turned its attention to the upcoming releases of Outlook 2003 and MSN 9 – both of which are fee-based, and nearly ready for launch. As of May, Microsoft announced that plans for future standalone versions of Internet Explorer have been scrapped, making the demise of Outlook Express that much more of an inevitability.
The Outlook Express has all the necessary stuff to do emailing.
People would just opt for other options like Netscape or Mozilla if OE becomes gone.
I doubt people would consider Outlook as a replacement for OE.
Score: 0
|Just another reason to go to Linux.
Robert
Score: 0
|why is gutting express a reason to go to linux? I would think that gutting express would be a reason to come back to m$.
Score: 0
|So now does everyone get it? When M$ is threatened by excellent freeware like Pegasus Mail, they so kindly offer free software like Outlook Express. What? Free browsers? Well then M$ will offer IE for free. What's the catch? When they have stomped out the competition they dump their free product and go back to their predatory ways. Don't get me wrong - I'm all in favor of companies making a profit. Just not when a Goliath gives a product away at a loss just to drive them out of the market.
BTW, there's still hope (-:
Check out the Outlook clone - http://www.ximian.com (for a Linux solution).
I have Red Hat Linux, Open Office, Ximian Evolution, etc. Total cost: $0
Score: 0
|A lead Outlook Express product manager recently told ZDNet, "IMAP is just not a very rich protocol."
It dose what it supposed to do; it gets the mail. Most home users just want to get email and not deal with the bloated features that comes with Outlook. But at least there are good alternatives to OE once it is gone.
Score: 0
|I'm not exactly sure what they meant by that comment about IMAP either. That's a pretty vague statement.
On the other hand, for home, I would prefer POP3 anyway. IMAP for home use really doesn't make a whole lot of sense for most users.
Score: 0
|I also prefer POP3. I wonder what the "lead Outlook Express product manager" thinks of that protocol. OE handles both well for the home users.
Score: 0
|The OE team is now part of the Windows OS team. Equivalent functionality will likely be offered in Longhorn and future versions of Windows, but, like IE, will only be available as part of an OS release or service pack.
OE will likely be replaced by a rewritten managed equivalent in Longhorn just as MS' other apps will be. The functionality may even be integrated into the OS and use a different paradigm which takes advantage of Longhorn's new file system/servces.
Score: 0
|I suppose in the grand scheme of things, despite whatever the government convicts MS of, they ultimately can do whatever they want. If they decide to only upgrade things like OE, IE, or Media Player with new OS releases, I suppose that's their option. Why continue to give people stuff for free when you can sucker them into paying $99 - 199 for it?! And people will do it. Although I don't think it's because they don't want to; I think it's because they want to add more of their own non-standard extensions and they need to have the functionality of their new OS.
Score: 0
|Why are they stopping OE. i love oe it meets all my email needs and it is a million times faster and more stable than outlook. what the hell are they doing. :-(
Score: 0
|Outlook Express is ok. It is easy for the masses but there are plenty of other free email clients out there so I am sure that people will be able to find a new one if they get tired of the old version of Outlook Express.
There might be a silver lining in all this. If people can only get a new Ms mail client by upgrading the OS like they decided to do with Internet Explorer I think that we are going to see people adopting other mail clients which should hopefully reduce the number of malicious worms and viruses that seem to propogate easily via the client.
Score: 0
|Mozilla:
http://www.mozilla.org/
Mozilla Thunderbird:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/
Both are very good email clients (the last one being standalone). Questions can be asked at:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/
They don't have the ability to interact with certain Microsoft based email servers functions but are good at IMAP, POP, and SMTP. Although it is unlikely many OE users know about this at all.
Score: 0
|For a Thunderbird installer, get it here:
http://tb.indyhost.biz/
Or:
http://www.qwoot.net/~tbinstall/
Score: 0
|Oh, I get it. Microsoft has declared Usenet itself irrelevant, such that Outlook 2003's default newsreader can be dropped entirely from the product line?
Geez.
Score: 0
|Outlook 2003 doesn't have a newsreader,and never will. No version of Outlook has a newsreader!
Score: 0
|OUtlook does have a newsreader. It is just hard to find in the newer versions. In the old ones, it was right there in the start menu, "Outlook 98 newsreader" It was, however, merely outlook express. All it did was open OE with news instead of mail. Kinda lame eh? That's what he meant by Outlook's newsreader being gone
Score: 0
|Well, Microsoft doesn't really care about the hardcore PC users or us tech geeks; they bank on a majority of the human population being lazy and/or lacking technology savvy. Most of you hit the nail right on the head when you spoke of Microsoft's evil guerilla marketing tactics: they love creating a dependency on a product, ripping it away from the customers, and then returning it for a "reasonable" price. Of course, so is the nature of any monopoly or even quasi-monopoly (Verizon is another good example).
Let's face it: Linux ownz but for those of us that do not have the time to be writing drivers, recompiling things, and trying to find anything that is compatible (or porting it yourself), it's still not a viable option. Furthermore, I think 90% of Linux users would like to keep their OS mostly exclusive so they can claim uber tech bragging rights, if not for other reasons. That's my take on it, not that I'm in ANY way a supporter of Microsoft.
As was also said by another individual here, they will likely integrate OE functionality into future projects (likely Longhorn) but I honestly think their upcoming OS releases and patches will be geared towards the coming WinFS and other Microsoft "innovations"; they just LOVE reinventing the wheel! Here's a tip: don't fix it if it's not broken and, well, if other things are clearly broken - FIX THEM. =oX
Pegasus Mail is cool but I generally hear that people prefer Mozilla. Me, I'll take anything that works... I run my own mail servers and have a tendency to write web-based mail clients.. Whatever gets the job done, I say!
Lastly, what the fudge is this business about IMAP not being a "rich protocol"? Who cares about it being robust? It's all about functionality. IMAP is a bit more resurce intensive than POP but it's useful; especially for those of us that tend to travel a lot and like to check our messages wherever we go without them going into a blackhole. Of course, POP clients almost always have the ubiquitous "keep message on server" option so I guess IMAP isn't too important. Hmmm.. Universal folder management, anyone? There's always remote access too but that's suseptible to bottlenecking.. Hey, there's ALWAYS a work-around so, don't worry, MS is just smacking down their customer base some more. WEEEEEE! Okie.. Enough rambling for me. ;o)
Score: 0
|Correct. So when you look at "programs" under IE/Tools/Options, you'll see the option for "newsgroups." If they were to discontinue OE, you wouldn't be able to have either of the only two options most people see there -- neither Outlook, not Outlook Express -- because choosing Outlook *still* results in OE being opened if you do a news:// URL.
Personally, I've always thought Microsoft was dumb as dirt for burying public folders so deep in the Outlook UI that Exchange users have to hunt for it. They've shown the same contempt for usenet access from an Outlook perspective, despite offering the most voluminous usenet support of any company on the planet.
Can anyone say "incoherence?" Stupidity, maybe?
Hey y'all -- are betanews discussions indexed in google? How about other web forums? What's that -- you say google's usenet index is *still* the best place to find answers to questions, even as we're moronic enough to be committing more and more of the tech world's most intelligent discussions to http-based forums that aren't indexed in google? That's it, that's what this whole Internet revolution's about -- make really good information even *more* inaccessible as our love affair with http goes on. Make it *more* dependent on knowing where to find it, rather than having it all indexed.
Sorry, I digress. ;-)
Score: 0
|Well-said.. Usenet is going the way of Gopher and it's a shame because it is such a useful tool; beyond the pirating of warez and "happy materials", of course! Most people can't even find a good free agent for newsgroups (besides OE), unless maybe you peruse abandoneware resources such as the HOME OF THE UNDERDOG - w00t! Fellow geeks and tech enthusiasts, there is still hope! =oD
Score: 0
|