J. Clarke wrote:
Puff Griffis wrote:
Just curious whets the matter with Outlook ? Its
already on your computer, It's free. It's easy and
it has filters.

Not Outlook, Outlook _Express_--different products, with no real
relation between them except that both are from Microsoft, both do
email, and both have "Outlook" in the name. You have to buy Outlook
and it doesn't have NNTP support without a third-party add-in. On
Vista, Outlook Express is no longer called that but is now "Windows
Mail".

Some people give the impression that they would rather die than use
Outlook Express and Internet Explorer--I don't understand the mindset
that gets that distraught about such things, but some people do.

That would be me. :-)

For years, Outlook (and Outlook Express) didn't follow the various mail
RFCs. In other words, they were clients for Windows mail, not Windows
clients for email. Microsoft used them to try to usurp the platform-neutral
nature of email.
Also, they had such lovely "features" as auto-open attachments. Before
Outlook came along, there were hoax emails that went around claiming,
"DO NOT OPEN AN EMAIL MESSAGE WITH THE SUBJECT (whatever)!!! IT WILL
DESTROY YOUR COMPUTER!!!" Those of us in computing laughed and grimmaced
turnabout at the stupidity of such messages--that is, until Microsoft made
such behaviour possible and even quite likely. Then add the amazing number
of years its taken them to make a product that STILL isn't stable, and
the fact that spam proliferation is predominantly based on Outlook/OE holes,
and I have enough justification to remove it from any PC I own. (And that
doesn't even bring up the issue of default HTML email--or just how badly
MS generates HTML.)

As for IE, similar concerns: They've aggressively added non-standard
extensions to HTML, such that websites designed for IE don't work in a
standards-compliant browser. Web pages that are designed for IE, aren't
really web pages--they're Windows application documents, and have no
business being published on port 80, which is reserved for the web.

Oh yeah, then there's the fact that IE is tied directly into the kernel,
which makes it easier to either trash or take over the user's computer.

Between IE and OE, I blame Microsoft for making spam and virus-writing
profitable. Given that roughly 90% OF ALL EMAIL TRAFFIC is now spam, and
that the spam is predominantly generated by the Russian mafia, I'd say
that Microsoft has some 'splainin' to do.

As for why I get distraught about it, well it's my job. I'm a Unix admin.
:-)

Colin