Life Without Microsoft – Part One – “Outlook”
Recent PC problems have forced yet another total re-install upon me. I think there might be a memory problem somewhere, as it now generally runs OK unless I ask too much of it – like installing MS Office.
So now I’m trying to live without it.
Let’s start with the obvious, core of any online work: email. I’ve been using Outlook since time began and become very comfortable with it, and last year’s introduction of Xobni pinned Outlook at the top of the list, in my opinion. Regardless, that option isn’t available to me right now. Casting around the open-source world gave me only three viable alternatives: Thunderbird (a long-time favourite of mine for personal email), Chandler, and Zimbra.
I’ve had my eye on Chandler for a while as it shows a lot of promise, so I gave that a whirl first. It has certainly evolved quite a bit since I last looked at it, and the UI has matured. it looks good and seems to work well. However, the working philosophy is so non-Outlook that I just couldn’t get on with it. I’m not saying there’s anything intrinsically wrong with it as such, just that I couldn’t quickly and easily learn to live with it. It may well be that, given time and a bit of patience, it would become a favourite, but I don’t have the time.
Zimbra was next, and I had high hopes for this although I now admit to being confused as to how it all works and what the hype was all about. As far as I can see, from a mail-client point of view, it’s a tame web-browser encapsulating an Ajax-heavy webmail client, with some added offline functionality. Having said that, it’s not hideous. Unfortunately it just refused to connect to my primary mail server, and as a result got binned.
Finally I put Thunderbird to task in a business environment. High traffic volume and huge amounts of SPAM aren’t things it’s had to deal with before, for me at least. You know what? T-bird lapped it up. Loved it. admittedly the UI isn’t quite as mature as Outlook’s, and the management features feel a little primitive, but all within my tolerance levels. So far, at least. Calendaring is handled by the Lightning extension, and is seemless. It’s all very neat and simple, and mostly works the way you would expect it to, although the folder-tree-per-account philosophy is a little odd to Outlook oldsters.
The only downside to all of the above, is that none of them provide proper support to synchronise with my mobile phone. And that’s a problem.
So for now, I’m happy with Thunderbird. I miss the phone-integration, but I’ll muddle through for a while and see what happens.
Is there anything else I should be looking at?
**Update** 11 Feb:
I’ve just come across this site: http://www.freewaregenius.com/2007/10/29/reinstall-windows-and-outfit-your-system-with-all-freeware-programs where the author has some great ideas. Check it out!
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment