I am forced to use Outlook at work. There are many reasons I don’t like this, including the fact that it doesn’t comply with normal email standards, and I cannot check my mail through my chosen client.
Due to some silly rules, when off campus I cannot even use the Outlook client, but instead must use the web interface. The web interface does not work with Firefox, of course.
Take a quick look at the way it presents the folders:
What do you see first? There is a very unhelpful ‘popout’ effect going on with this list, even at the reduced size seen here. The two least important folders are in bold with coloured numbers beside them: deleted and junk. I have to hunt for the inbox in alphabetical order.
Granted, my inbox is actually empty (yay!) so that’s why it isn’t bold, but it is so critical, it should be right at the top. I hear often from colleagues about the wonderful usability labs at Microsoft. They brag about the ability to recruit and test with ‘real people’ instead of the undergrads us in academia are often forced to use. However, it doesn’t seem to help them solve basic usability issues like this.
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2 comments:
Hi Chris!
Are these "silly rules" that make you use Outlook administrative or technological? Because if it's just the fact that your work provides only Exchange access rather than POP, IMAP, SMTP, CalDav, and LDAP, then you do have other options.
If you're using *nix (including GNU/Linux), then Evolution is an integrated mail, addressbook, and calendar client that supports older versions of the Exchange protocol. I was able to use it happily at my work place until they "upgraded" our server to Exchange 2007. I don't like Evolution as much as Kontact, but at least it is fairly standards-compliant (no top posting, etc.).
Another option is a Free Exchange gateway, DavMail, which you can install on your computer. The DavMail gateway connects to an Exchange server (including Exchange 2007) on your behalf, and then exposes the standard Internet protocols for receiving mail (POP and IMAP), sending mail (SMTP), calendars (CalDav), and address books (LDAP). You can then configure your favourite mail client (Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Evolution, Kontact, etc.) to connect to the DavMail gateway. DavMail is a Java application so it should run on any system that supports Java.
Regards,
Tristan
all the same reasons I hate outlook too. awesome
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