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Microsoft Office Outlook vs. free email choices (continued)
By the way, Outlook Express is far from the only free email program for Windows. There's the Mozilla Project's Thunderbird, which is excellent and will soon incorporate technology from the highly influential Eudora email program. There's also Pegasus.
Oh, man, did you see what they did with the Pegasus in Galactica last week? But I digress.
Pegasus is a pretty old, but still quite usable email client for Windows. It, too, is free. At this point in time, if you were to choose a free email client, I'd probably recommend Thunderbird over Outlook Express. For that matter, you could also get a Gmail account and just do everything on the Web. It's free and very easy to use.
But let's get back to the differences.
Outlook vs. Outlook Express
In a nutshell, Outlook lets you access Exchange server email, which many corporate users need to do. You can automatically send out-of-office email replies. In these days of crazy spam, out-of-office messages are horribly annoying -- but it is an Outlook feature. You also get some of the PIM features, including a group calendar, multiple address books, and the ability to track your tasks, a notes function, spam filtering (which is ok, but not great).
Outlook Express does none of that. Weirdly, Outlook Express does have one feature Outlook does not: newgroup support. You can read newsgroups from within Outlook Express. In fact, while it appears Outlook has newsgroup support, what really happens is the newsgroup opens within an Outlook Express window.
Table A, derived from Microsoft's site, helps showcase how the programs are different:
| Features |
Outlook |
Outlook Express |
| Send and receive e-mail messages. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Connect to Microsoft Exchange Server for enhanced collaboration, scheduling with free/busy information, and online forms. |
Yes |
No |
| Connect to POP3 Internet e-mail servers. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Connect to IMAP and HTTP e-mail servers, including MSN Hotmail, America Online (AOL), and Yahoo! Mail (subscription fees might be required by the provider). |
Yes |
Yes |
| Address Book and Contacts folder to store and retrieve e-mail addresses. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Out of Office Assistant that automatically sends a reply to incoming messages while you are out of the office. |
Yes |
No |
| Multiple address books. |
Yes |
No |
| Fully integrated Calendar, including meeting and event scheduling, appointments, and group calendars. |
Yes |
No |
| Reminders for e-mail messages, calendar events, tasks, and notes. |
Yes |
No |
| Information Rights Management (IRM) functionality that allows you to control whether recipients can print, copy, or forward your e-mail messages. |
Yes |
No |
| Integration with Windows SharePoint sites. |
Yes |
No |
| Auto backup (archive) functionality to keep your mailbox manageable. Store old items that you want to keep but don't need immediate access to, and move those old items to the archive location automatically. |
Yes |
No |
| Microsoft Office Word as your e-mail editor to provide access to additional formatting and style options. |
Yes |
No |
| Categories for organizing your items. |
Yes |
No |
| Side-by-side calendars where you can view multiple calendars and drag items between the calendars. |
Yes |
No |
| Tasks folder to keep lists of personal or work-related errands that you want to track from start to finish. |
Yes |
No |
| Junk e-mail message filter. |
Yes |
No |
| Notes folder - the electronic equivalent of paper sticky notes. |
Yes |
No |
| Access to NNTP newsgroups. |
No |
Yes |
| Signatures and stationery. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Secure e-mail messaging. |
Yes |
Yes |
The name Outlook Express will go away when Windows Vista ships. Instead, there's going to be a free email client called Windows Mail. Next week, we'll talk about the free email client, calendar, task manager, and contact manager that you'll see in Windows Vista when it finally ships.
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