1. Heh, I commented on a similar "review" in December:
http://www.kunal.kundaje.net/2004_12_01_archives.php#pl110344230702424455

It's just ridiculous. :)

Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Kunal Kundaje

2. What you say is very true, Marc. However, lest we forget how quickly Firefox is becoming the IE killer, Microsoft needs to do something to "fix" Outlook. There are lots of add-ins for Outlook but let me tell you, they are NOT fun to write. Outlook's programming model is a mess and needs a complete rewrite. I hate that backwards compatibility gets MS into these situations. What is your take? Think its time to rewrite Outlook from scratch?

Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Josh Einstein

3. Josh:

I won't argue your point - because you actually *have* gone through the horror of writing an add-in you know far better than I do the intricacies and challenges that presents ;^)

What I was really trying to say is that Thunderbird isn't an Outlook challenger. It doesn't do tasks, contacts, calendar, or journaling - we're talking apples and rutabagas here. By the time you cobble enough extension onto Thunderbird to give it all the core capabilities Outlook has, how stable will it be?

I love Firefox - it's my primary browser - but it gets unstable if you load too many extensions on it - just like Outlook with add-ins.

To answer your most interesting question - YES! Microsoft should rewrite Outlook from the ground up. There's a ton of legacy code and cruft in the base now (according to developers who know a lot more about this than I ever will). Outlook 2003 has a good UI and powerful features but the performance and extensibility, not to mention the security, demands a rearchitecting of the code sometime soon. Maybe the next Office release?

Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Marc Orchant

4. I agree with you that Thunderbird isn't even in the same category as Outlook currently. I was just observing how quickly Firefox had come along and if the press is making out Thunderbird to be an Outlook killer, how much longer until they get stable native implementations of Tasks, Journal, Calendar, Contacts, etc.

Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Josh Einstein

5. For any third party app to be an Outlook killer it will have to sport very good interoperability with all the MS Office apps and Windows Mobile devices. I don't see that coming along any time soon.

Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by James Kendrick

6. Marc, you're right, and I'm a Thunderbird zealot. Bonuses over Outlook: properly threaded messages, colour-coded labels, grouping, speed, security yadayadayada. However, TB will not be able to compete until it has:
1. A properly functioning calendar;
2. Sync options with handheld devices (e.g., I got a Sony Ericsson P910i for Xmas and I can't sync it with TB)
And so on...

However, I still ain't going back to Outlook ;-)

Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by spk

7. James: I agree 100%. And it also needs to be accepted by third-party developers as a sync priority (e.g. MindManager).

Josh: Given the current pace of development on Sunbird (which appears to be the Mozilla project that would add these other features), it's going to be a while.

spk: Color-coding and grouping are actually pretty easy to accomplish in Outlook 2003. Threading definitely needs work. Speed - let's not go there - we're back to comparing a lightweight e-mail client to a dashboard app - hardly fair.

Posted at 6:20AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Marc Orchant