Outlook 2010 sucks. And not in a good way.

It’s such a bad piece of software, and the company who wrote it (yes, *them*) cares so little for the poor bastards who have to use it, that it has an annoyance that really irritates me (that has existed for, like, ever), and one fundamental bug that renders it utterly useless as an email client, and relegates it to ‘useful only as an Exchange client’ status.

The annoyance is that when you install Outlook it creates something it calls Local Folders. This is of course because everyone who wants to have an email client, obviously wants to store all their email on their computer’s hard disk, right?

Wrong. Sensible people using Outlook are either using Exchange (where it’s ALL on the server) or IMAP (where similarly, it’s all on the server). Local folders are for people stuck with POP3. Like it’s the 1980s.

And you can not select an IMAP mailbox to be your ‘default delivery’ location, only your Local Folders or an Exchange server.

Annoying.

The fundamental bug? This bug was reported in Outlook 2010′s first beta release, because … it’s fundamental:

If you are using IMAP, Outlook will not display any notification that new mail has arrived. No beep, no popup (those only work with POP3/Exchange anyway), and no little envelope in the system tray to tell you that you received an email.

Although it was reported over a year ago, it has never been fixed, and is in the current release version of Outlook that comes with Office 2010.

So after I was ‘upgraded’ to Office 2010, I used my iPhone’s mail beep to tell me I had received email. Suboptimal but it worked. I also had to check regularly in case any mail had arrived while I was away from my desk for 5 minutes. It was getting to the point where it was starting to get on my tits.

My dislike for Outlook begins – let’s try Thunderbird

Well, then it happened that for some arcane licensing reasons our IT people (without telling about this) needed to change the product key on my copy of Office 2010. On a Friday evening. So when I came into the office on Monday morning, I was greeted by Outlook saying it would not let me start because there was a problem with the licence. I hunted down the IT person who had rogered my machine (“I was using that”) and he tried to fix it. In the end the only thing that would do it was a reinstallation of Office 2010.

So unable to use Excel (which I needed), and frustrated with only having my iPhone with which to wade through email, I had a brainwave: Lets install Thunderbird!

I will point out that I have used Thunderbird before; way back in the mists of time, I installed an early version and while it was interesting, it felt decidedly clunky. If I am honest, after using Outlook with Exchange for over a decade before then using it as an IMAP mail client for another couple of years, Thunderbird still does not feel as slick as Outlook’s UI.

BUT – and this is a big one: THUNDERBIRD WILL TELL ME WHEN I HAVE MAIL.

To me, this is one of the fundamental things a mail client should do. In fact, lets have a quick list of the things I think are important about a mail client. This is my list of features a mail client needs to have, in descending order of importance (most important at the top):

1. Must be secure. Email is private, and this needs to be built in from the start. No defaulting to non-SSL/TLS.
2. Must support IMAP.
3. Must tell me as soon as possible when I have new email.
4. Must allow me to read mail in any folder.
5. Must allow me to send email, including replies and forwarding.
6. Must give me access to attachments.
7. Must save all my sent messages.
8. Must keep track of people I know and their email addresses.
9. Should allow me to view email sent in HTML.
10. Should show inline images.
11. Should allow me to turn off bits I don’t want. Notes? Don’t use them. Todos? Nope.
12. Nice if it has calendar support (or even better – integration)
13. Nice if it can show attachments of various types.

I am sure there are others, but you get my point: telling me when I have mail is important. Showing me inline Excel files is a nice-to-have, but when they are only a double-click away, it’s not a must-have.

Outlook

So back to Outlook. Outlook does one thing extremely well: it is quite simply the best way to talk to an Exchange server, bar none. If you are running an Exchange server, you are using Outlook as the client – because if you are not, you really are missing out on swathes of goodness.

If you are NOT running Exchange, then you should be using POP3 if you want to use Outlook – because Outlook’s support for IMAP is not good. Sure, you can read IMAP mail stores, and it does the whole marking read and moving between folders thing just fine; but sometimes it will say something like “uh-oh, an email’s ID just changed – this usually indacates a bug in the server” and after that it sometimes works and sometimes not, until you close Outlook and open it again.

But let me get this straight: POP3 is just horrible. It is a system that was invented to allow batch-downloading of emails from an inbox. That’s it. Nothing more. You can tell a POP3 client to leave your mail where it found it, when it pulls it from the inbox, but by default Outlook deletes it. Nice.

These days, you are likely to have at least three devices pull mail from your office email account: The computer in the office, the computer at home, and the computer in your pocket. If they all use POP3 and you have it set up to leave messages on the server, you still have the problem that you have no synchronisation of ‘read/unread’ markers between devices. And that’s before I start talking about folders. POP3 has no concept of folders.

Do not use POP3. Simply … don’t. Let it die.

So … all the cool kids use IMAP. It has folders, and mail is left on the server because your IMAP client just gives you a view of the mail on the server. You read mail on one device, and it’s marked as already read across all devices.

But Outlook’s IMAP implementation is fundamentally broken. So – if you don’t use Exchange, do NOT use Outlook.

Thunderbird compared to Outlook

I have been using Thunderbird for a month as my main work mail client. It suffers from the same annoyance that Outlook does, where it thrusts these ‘Local Folders’ upon you, but with a little tweakery they can be hidden. Score one for Thunderbird.

Its fonts and general appearance are still not as slick as Outlook’s. But I am in need of an email client that works, and Thunderbird is a pretty good IMAP client. One of the better ones, in fact. Score another for Thunderbird.

If I look at the list above, Thunderbird does not have a calendar that integrates with mail. Shame about that, really – Outlook’s calendar is excellent, although it really comes into its own when integrated with Exchange, where it is simply the best calendar management system I have ever had the pleasure to use. Want to invite people to meetings, book rooms, book resources, mark your time out of the office, see who’s free at certain times? Exchange and Outlook are superb for that. Score one for Exchange.

Outlook allows you to ‘preview’ attachments, but in-place modification is a no-no, so a lot of the times you need to open them anyway. That’s also only a nice-to-have on my list, so I am not going to score Outlook for that one.

Thunderbird will tell me when I receive new email. Score one for Thunderbird. (Technically, so will Outlook if you are using Exchange. Score one for Exchange.)

Thunderbird is easy to set up with IMAP, and also tries SSL/TLS before ‘vanilla’ insecure ports. Outlook needs you to jump through a few more hoops, especially if you want IMAP with SSL/TLS, but they can both get a bit complicated. Before I say there is no winner, if you try to setup non-Exchange email on Outlook, it defaults to POP3. And to connect to an Exchange server, you just enter your server name, user name and password. Score one for Exchange, and a half for Thunderbird.

Exchange allows you to have a global address list, whereas Thunderbird and Outlook on POP3/IMAP only have local ones. Score another for Exchange.

Outlook’s UI is slick, and it has many many options to allow you to tweak it. Thunderbird still feels a little spartan in comparison – but it does the job. Score a half for Outlook.

So from a quick check, I count the following:

• Thunderbird: 3.5 non-scientific points
• Exchange: 4 non-scientific points
• Outlook: 0.5 non-scientific points

So there you have it. Exchange wins (and that means Exchange with Outlook!). Thunderbird comes second, and Outlook got half a point for looking nice.

Exchange Server

Have you ever set up an Exchange server? Have you ever maintained one? I have.

Unless you use the Small Business Server approach, setting up Exchange yourself is a gargantuan task, and if you want to do anything remotely ‘different’ (e.g. forward all outgoing mail through your ISP’s mail servers on the way out), it starts to get very complicated very quickly.

It is also a very expensive and resource-hungry application. It requires that you run it on a domain controller, running a 64-bit version of Windows, and it needs at the very least 2GB of RAM to itself.

Only available to those who have one of the higher Microsoft Partner subscriptions, or who have deep pockets, or to those who rent a hosted Exchange solution (which are actually pretty reasonable, but you don’t have total control over the server). Not recommended to the small business or the home user, unless they like learning esoteric stuff about bits of Active directory they have previously never heard of. Don’t know what a ‘forest’ is? Best not install Exchange just yet.

Apple OS X ‘Mail’ Application

This is the best email client I have ever used. It handles Exchange pretty well, and while it will do POP3, it assumes you want IMAP – using SSL/TLS.

It hides all the details of IMAP from you (where Outlook does NOT – it leaves items ‘marked for deletion’ on display by default, for example), and it simply works. It is a wonderful thing, when used as an IMAP client. And it’s surprisingly good as an Exchange client.

Tempted to switch to Mac but didn’t want to because you were scared about email? To be fair, there are reasons to be scared about switching to using a Mac instead of Windows. Email is not one of them.

Conclusion

If you are using a Mac, use the included Mail application – it’s wonderful.

If you are using Windows, and you need to connect to Exchange, you need to be using Outlook – the two together are a wonderful combination.

Otherwise, do not use POP3. Do not use Outlook.

I use Thunderbird on Windows, and I like it. At home I use Apple’s Mail application.

Oh – and the cost: Outlook is expensive, as part of Office 2010. Exchange is hideously expensive. Thunderbird is free and open source. Apple’s Mail application is included with OS X, and so is free when you buy a Mac.

I have been watching the ongoing spat between Adobe and Apple about how Flash is “not allowed” on the iPhone and iPad OS.

Apple control the iPhone and iPad OS very carefully, to ensure that the user experience is as good as it can be. This means that they try not to allow dubious apps in the App Store (although there were all those fart apps – did people really pay money for those?), and it means that they are now telling developers that they cannot use third-party libraries that sit between the app and the OS.

I mentioned this second issue in my previous post about iPhone OS v4, and how in my view it makes perfect sense for Apple to do this, because relying on a third-party library to be bug-free and to use all the latest OS features (as well as to be updated in a timely fashion when new OS features are released) is dangerous for Apple.

Flash in particular is a contentious point, because on the MacOS, it performs horribly. Even when using the 10.1 beta versions, it is horribly slow – you get mouse cursor lag on a Core 2 Duo CPU with ample RAM. So in my opinion, Apple are right to say to Adobe that Flash should not be allowed on their OS until it works. Basically.

Well, after all the posturing, and the immature ads Adobe has taken out saying how much they love Apple “but …”, I had another thought: it’s time Adobe showed the world how good their Flash Player is on the iPhone!

Adobe should release a Flash Player that can be installed on a jailbroken iPhone or iPad.

On a jailbroken iPhone or iPad, you you can install anything, from bash to a clunky multitasking implementation, to background apps that monitor the way the phone is being used. Absolutely anything.

So …

Go on Adobe – you are saying that your Flash Player is so good, and how it will work so well on the iPhone, despite the fact that you have not yet managed to get it working to “release” quality on Android, or any other mobile platform yet. Lets see what you’ve got!

Apple say that Flash content relies on mouse-hovers, and that won’t work so well on an iPhone or iPad – so prove them wrong!

Apple say that Flash Player is unreliable (and the videos you can find of it dying horribly during a demo on the Android OS don’t help, frankly), so show them that it’s not!

Apple say that the performance would suck on the lesser CPUs used on mobile devices, so lets see how well it performs!

Finally, there is the issue of battery life. Adobe say this would not be a problem, and Apple say it would. Show us!

Adobe: Please release a Flash Player for the iPhone and iPad OS, that can be installed on a jailbroken iPhone or iPad. Prove to us that what you are saying is true, and that Apple are telling lies for some evil purpose.

Just … prove it.

Show us.

People like to read.

There is something about reading that is totally unlike, say, watching a movie or listening to music.

It does not matter if the book is written on actual paper, on a computer screen or on a handheld device designed specifically for portability and long battery life.

I read recently (on http://daringfireball.net/) that some publishers are not sure how to handle this newfangled technology stuff. At first glance, it is easy to think that this could be the same as the problems surrounding music and movies – but there is a fundamental difference between those types of content, and books:

Traditionally, publishers release a book in the expensive hardback (or hardcover) format for a period of time, and then later release it for a much lower price in paperback form.

Given this business model, it makes sense that they would try to sell as many hardback books as they can, before they then drop the prices and then sell the paperback edition. Of course some people prefer the hardback because it is more robust, has larger print or larger pages, or it just feels like a ‘real book’ – but for the most part, after the paperback has been released that’s what most people buy.

The problem with the digital distribution of what we would probably call ‘content’ is that there is no ‘hardback’ or ‘paperback’, there is just the content. And the publishers just don’t know how to deal with it.

To someone who has been working in software development since 1987, this complete lack of clue baffles me. It’s not rocket science.

What the publishers need is proper marketing. To me this seems obvious, but I suspect that they don’t believe that they can continue to make their current level of margins with a business model based on digital distribution of their books.

However, printing a book costs money, as does distributing it. Once a book is written and typeset, it has to go for a print run. Then it needs sending out to all the shops where they also need to make a profit – what’s more, the shops do their own local marketing.

So here is my suggestion for the publishers:

• Market a book ahead of time.
• Generate real demand for the book, and pre-announce it.
• On the launch date, offer it for sale through a distribution channel (lets say Apple’s forthcoming online book store – it already works for music) at a higher price that would give the publisher a healthy margin.
• After a set period of time, reduce the price to a point where the margin is comparable with the cost of the paperback.

Go on, I dare you. But no pussyfooting around with that marketing – without it you might as well pack up and go home.

This kind of approach is tried and tested! It works with hardware, with DVD movies, and it works with software. The ‘early adopters’ are the people who want to buy the item (or buy the DVD, buy the hardback, or whatever) right away, and then there are those who would wait for the DVD to be put in the ‘bargain bin’ (or buy the paperback).

Music and movies are still struggling, with the distributors still desperately hanging on to their ‘old’ models of production and distribution – but are slowly coming round to more digital-friendly ways of allowing people to buy their wares.

Books will be next.

Because when all is said and done, people like to read.

This is a new blog, started because I like to post stuff of general tech interest, and thought it better to have a proper blog rather than using a ‘personal’ website to vent my rantings.

The intention is to use this site to post whenever interesting stuff arises – lets see how it turns out!