On Thursday 07 February 2002 12:59 pm, Troy.A Johnson wrote: > >>>Quoting Joel Rosenberg (joelr at ellegon.com): > > > > Well, both of which are bad, but I think it's more practical, at least in > > anything but the longest run, to protect yourself by means likely to be > > more effective than trying to talk people out of using Outlook right now. > > And when would be a better time to persuade > people not to use the "swiss cheese of emailers"? When there's a viable alternative -- from their POV. Read Jerry Pournelle's columns, for example. Jerry hates the flaws in Outlook, but he finds some of its features unavailable elsewhere, and very handy. If, say, Evolution could do the hard stuff -- handling of task assignments and meeting requests -- it would be a viable alternative for a lot of folks. Right now, it's just a nice email program that sort of looks like Outlook. Ditto for sylpheed. > > > With > > all its flaws, it does have features that are not easily reproducible, > > and it is the standard. > > It is definitely NOT "the standard". I guess we're arguing about definitions here. I do think that it is the standard in the business world, for example, and that millions of people use it. Is it good? Well, in many respects, no; in some respects, sure. Is it the standard? Yes. Does it use the MIME standards by default? Nah. > > I would expect "the standard" to send "standard" > MIME attachments right out of the box. Having > to process "winmail.dat" files is a PITA. > > The word "standard" is abused by mentioning > it in the same sentence as that standard subverting > menace of an emailer. > > Of course, groupwise is also pretty lame, but provides > lots of "capabilities" too. Is vCal going to go anywhere > soon? > I doubt it. If you look at where the heavy development in the open source world is, it's not for point-and-click tools to make the life of business users easier. To take another, minor example, look at the difference between what's available for PDAs in Windows apps -- let's not even discuss easily available; I still can't get mail to synchronize -- vs. Linux. -- ------------------------------------- There's a widow in sleepy Chester Who weeps for her only son; There's a grave on the Pabeng River, A grave that the Burmans shun, And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri Who tells how the work was done. -------------------------------------