Outlook

See also: E-Mail Clients

Home Page: http://www.microsoft.com/office/outlook/

Microsoft‘s E-Mail reading tool for Windows and Macintosh / Mac OS X operating systems. There are various different flavors of Outlook:

  • Exchange – early version of Microsoft’s e-mail offering
  • Outlook – Powerful e-mail and Groupware
  • Outlook Express (stripped down version of Outlook, comes default with Windows
  • Entourage – Outlook for Macintosh (no Entourage Express is available)
  • Exchange Server – Microsoft’s E-Mail server for all of the above products

A free (beer) version of Outlook, Outlook Express, (Windows only) is also available with no workgrouping tools such as calendaring, automated meeting setup tools, and other features.

Unlike other e-mail clients, Outlook has very poor security. It has been very vulnerable to a number of viruses. Visit officeupdate.microsoft.com to help patch Outlook against e-mail vulnerabilities and purchase good anti-virus software. Other reasons to avoid Microsoft Outlook.

Although Outlook’s many derrivatives connect to Exchange Server, it can also connect with other e-mail server types such as Sendmail, QMail, etc. or any POP / IMAP capable server.

Outlook and Groupware

Possibly the most popular form of Groupware is Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server. However, as proprietary, closed-source software, Exchange is sometimes inconvinient to use due to both viruses and the necessity of purchasing both Exchange Server and Outlook software for each client. Also, Outlook is only available on Macintosh (Entourage) and Windows platforms.

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