The one program that has continued to suck (and no one seems to care but me) is Outlook. That is the most retarded interface ever born. Let's examine the default interface. The left third of the screen is filled with folder buttons and tabs to access your calendar, contacts, email, etc. The middle third lists your e-mails in whichever folder you happen to be viewing. The right third is a preview window that shows a preview of the current e-mail.
So wait, lets make a slow UI that has to open each e-mail as you scroll over it. But you can also double click on an individual e-mail to open it full screen. Why the crap is the preview window there? It seems ridiculously redundant to have two ways to view one e-mail. Also, if you scroll over an e-mail with a lot of in-line pictures, then Outlook takes a few seconds to load that e-mail into the preview. The computer stops to "think" and you have to wait for it. Even though you weren't even going to read that e-mail. Ridiculous. So, in summary, Microsoft Outlook is gay. Don't even get me started on the calendar portion!
My post would not be complete without listing some of the features of competitors. I'll go for my favorite, Gmail.
- Gmail has POP access, just like Outlook
- Gmail has e-mail forwarding
- Gmail has 2.8GB of storage, and counting
- Gmail links to most other Google Apps, like Docs & Spreadsheets (meaning you don't have to download attachments to open them)
- Gmail has a great UI (conversation view)
- Gmail has labels - instead of folders, any e-mail conversation can be put into multiple labels. For example, an e-mail from BYU which contains my financial information would be labeled (according to me) as "BYU" and "Financial Information." Outlook doesn't do this.
- Gmail has a great search for finding e-mails
- Contacts auto-complete when sending e-mails.
And more. So yeah, what gripes do you have about Outlook or other software you use? Do you have a good alternative? Anyway, until later, amigos
I'm with you. I don't see anything about outlook that would make me want to use it over gmail!
Adam, I love your updates. You rock. I'm behind you 100%. I've got several computer maintenance/clean-up projects for you while you're down here. I can't wait!
Hello Adam (angry man),
in Outlook you have a choice to have the preview part of your mail.. - U can just remove the view and not having it; easy...
The left part of the screen u can resize by choice, and you can decide yourself if the icons should be small or large. :-)
- nice to have fast access to calender, contacts etc. :-)
Gmail is a webmail, Outlook is a mailclient but it also has a webmailview where you can log on to and I believe that you can costumize that part by choice.
:-)
* Gmail has POP access, just like Outlook
- good for Gmail and Outlook
* Gmail has e-mail forwarding
- so has Outlook
* Gmail has 2.8GB of storage, and counting
- Outlook as being a mailclient on your PC, storage is decided by the size of your HD
* Gmail links to most other Google Apps, like Docs & Spreadsheets (meaning you don't have to download attachments to open them)
- Outlook is part of the Office suite, where there is Word, spreadsheet etc, OK it costs - GoogleApps does not - good for Gmail users
* Gmail has a great UI (conversation view)
- not familiar with that part, good for Gmail / subjective view ?
* Gmail has labels - instead of folders, any e-mail conversation
can be put into multiple labels. For example, an e-mail from BYU which contains my financial information would be labeled (according to me) as "BYU" and "Financial Information." Outlook doesn't do this.
- yes it does, I do it every day, it is called categories
* Gmail has a great search for finding e-mails
- so has Outlook, if you put all emails in the same folder and label them with a category, you find them quick :-)
* Contacts auto-complete when sending e-mails.
- in Outlook type part of name and move on, when you have your mail finished, move up to receiver again and chooce between the users that scored on your "part of namn" easy :-)
Ah Flemming, my fine sweedish friend, thanks for commenting.
However, I hope I can cure you of your MS loving ways and show you the light.
I am kidding, I do like MS products such as Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.
My only gripe is the inefficiency of Outlook as compared to Gmail on a high speed connection.
Outlook, theoretically, has a storage only limited by your hard disk size. However, the converse to that is the speed at which Outlook operates is dictated by the overall performance of your computer. I myself have an average computer and the more emails that pile up, the slower and slower Outlook runs. Gmail, being server based, runs at the speed of Google's servers. I don't know about you, but Google's servers have outclassed Outlook and my home PC every time.
Also, Outlook does have many handy options and useful features and UI options. However, Gmail's UI is very streamlined. There are many features that are clearly labeled and I know what the options will do just by reading the heading.
Regarding POP access, Outlook primarily permits accessing preexisting e-mail accounts through POP access. This means.....you have an e-mail account and need Outlook to access it.
With Gmail, you can use your Gmail e-mail address, or have other e-mail accounts downloaded to your Gmail inbox via POP access. Does Outlook do that? I think not.
In summation, Outlook and Gmail are reasonably comparable. I prefer Gmail because the UI is cleaner and options are all useful and easy to understand. Best of all, Gmail is free. It offers all the options of paid e-mail clients and paid, serve r based e-mail clients as well.
Hi Adam,
I know Gmail is nice, I have an account myself.
I just wanted to point out that Outlook is not so bad as you wanted to make it. I use Outlook, Lotus Notes, Hotmail & Gmail and I find Outlook nice to use with all stuff it has and I think you were wrong in many of your arguments against Outlook. Lotus Notes has its advantages and so on. Maybe I have had powerfull computers or do not get as many mails as you, but I have never been experiencing a slow Outlook. Be well Adam.
Regards Flemming
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Yep, just stumbled across your blog because I was trying to figure out why Outlook keeps your contacts segregated (CCed, dist list, contacts, etc...) and I finally gave up trying to get all contacts under one folder by searching "I hate Outlook"...
Anyway, I'm with you 100% on gmail. I love how it adds any contacts that happen to cross through the inbox to your contacts folder (singular, no dist lists!) and calendar, chat, etc. are all integrated. Yes, it's web-based, but that is its strength because it will never download harmful emails to your hard drive.
I think if we were to fix Outlook, I would give it a simple interface that handles contacts like gmail does, but also has the option to add tags to them (similar to dist lists). And the email composer would write everything into standard CSS form, but give you the ability to compose it in Word, Excel, and Publisher modes so you could import any of those documents as a template. Then I'd completely do away with the current exchange server and make it as functional as the desktop application.
Just my .02
Good luck with your email ventures. I hope you have the chance to work for a company that uses google applications.
Haha, thanks for the shout out Tom. I know exactly where you are coming from. We used to use outlook at work, but we've moved from outlook to gmail completely. And we're starting to use Google Apps more for document sharing. We still have word and excel, but its much harder to share documents between a large group that way.
Maybe you should share your ideas for Outlook with Microsoft, and then when Office 2015 comes out, you could be in those "I'm a PC and Office 2015 was my idea" style commercials.
I HATE HATE HATE OUTLOOK! Never had a problem with Hotmail. Too lazy to change everything and all my email files to Gmail. What to do, what to do???