Chris Cioffi wrote:
On 4/6/07, James Knott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Nekelle Celestine wrote:
>
> Good Day Sir/Madam
>
>
>
> When will Open Office create a Microsoft Outlook equivalent? I'm
> really excited about that.
>
Given that Outlook is an inferior mail client, compared to the
alternatives, why would you want an equivalent? You may want to try
Thunderbird, which can be obtained from www.mozilla.com .
Outlook is far more than just email. The Outlook/Exchange combination is
something I haven't seen really replicated yet. The combination of Email,
Calendar, Todo and Journal, even if individually lacking, combine into a
very powerful tool. Especially the ability to *easily* schedule meeting
and
assign tasks.
So, given that Thunderbird is an inferior tool for serious business why
would you promote it? And, given the glaring omission of a PIM in OOo
right
now, why should a business choose it?
Seriously, in a business setting users expect a full featured, integrated
PIM like Outlook/Exchange. Yeah, Outlook sucks for email and it's not even
close to the best for anything else it does, but it's a single tool and
when
integrated with Exchange it really does set a very high bar for overall
functionality. Not everyone in an organization needs it, but guess what?
The folks making the decisions do! And they aren't going to settle for a
second rate solution.
Chris
PS: Yes, I know that not all midsize+ organizations use Outlook/Exhange
and
that there are alternatives if you cobble together enough different tools.
The fact remains that Outlook/Exchange is currently king of the hill in
that
space, and calling it just an email system ignores a significant part of
it's value proposition.
Outlook is a crappy front end and exchange server is not reliable (see
my sig).
Since moving to Exchange server last year and only using mapi on the
server, those users that had been using Thunderbird or any other program
have been forced to Outlook. Guess what, most users hate it in
comparison to Thunderbird. I hear the complaints on a daily basis and
many users won't even open Outlook unless they know there is a message
coming in that they want to read. Heck, even the IT people would go
back to SMTP/POP if they were allowed.
There is Evolution for Linux and soon (in beta?) for Windows as an
alternative. I find that Evolution is too much of a clone of Outlook
that it took all the things that moved me from Outlook in the first place.
I don't want OpenOffice to include a mail client because this all in one
application leads to headaches when problems occur. Look at the
headaches the Microsoft is having with fixing a simple animated cursor
in the OS. A few months before a patch and then the first patch breaks
other applications. To many things depend on other applications and
thus makes fixing problems harder.
There are better options than Exchange server/Outlook for businesses to
use. Just marketing of Exchange by Microsoft.
--
Due to the move to M$ Exchange Server,
anything that is a priority, please phone.
Robin Laing
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