[windows2000] Re: OT: I've Had it with Outlook
- From: David Spanne <werenomads@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: windows2000@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 08:33:58 -0800
I've read most of a weeks worth of chatter about Outlook and M$ Good/M$ Evil
and marginal car analogies, and its time I put in my useless 2 cents.
Outlook
I'm part of a support team for a network with 7k plus users throughout CA and
NV. We use Micro$oft OSs and Office. Outlook accounts for more support calls
than any other deployed application. This is not because it?s bad, though it
does have more than its share of security holes. Its because we all live in
email, and its the most used application. I have a bad analogy for
Outlook/Exchange - Its the Champion model of the Swiss Army knife (the one that
is as wide with tools as it is long, and is a weapon even closed) and most
users really only need the Executive model (slim, simple blade, scissors and
nail file - fits nicely it the pocket). Go to Outlook's services dialog box
and look at all the things to which you can connect - its beyond most users,
and even some techs. Look at the options dialog - my favorite tab in Outlook
97-2000 has been the "Other" tab - they could not even think of a good category
name for this tab. There is so much it can do, and so many settings t
hat affect other settings, and hooks into IE, OE and the OS, that its
complexity creates support work.
I've used quite a few email programs (Pegasus, Outlook Express, Mozilla Mail,
Thunderbird, Eudora, iScribe, Popcorn - to name just a few) but even with its
security flaws I return to Outlook like a junky who can't beat the habit. Jim,
I pray that you succeed in breaking your M$ Outlook habit with Thunderbird, its
quite good (please, no Methadone analogies).
Micro$oft
Let me start by saying - THANK YOU EUROPEAN UNION, I hope you can really get M$
to pay where our Fed and State Attorney General offices rolled over and played
dead.
Here is my M$ analogy - Biggest drug dealer in the world, uses classic mob
business tactics.
Lets start by naming programs that M$ has given away for free, only to now
charge lots of $. Outlook, Frontpage, Internet Explorer. M$ said Internet
Explorer would always be free; I knew it was a lie then, now they've announced
it for all. Future releases of Internet Explorer will only be offered as part
of a Microsoft OS - that's not free. But it will allow M$ (like Frontpage, but
much more effective because of the size) to use its installed base to make web
content more proprietary, so that you have to use IE, and therefore a M$ OS to
correctly view content.
Build a large base of dealers that work for you (programmers? Sysadmins?) by
giving them product at free or cut rates (who here this week said they got a
fee copy of the latest Office?).
License a programming language designed to be platform independent, create a
programming tool set that has proprietary extensions (in violation of the
license) made to break the whole purpose of the language, and sell cheap
programming tool sets or give it away to your installed base of loyal dealers
(Sun deserves hundreds of millions for this act).
Lets build on Office Suite that uses XML, but not the XML that everyone else
uses for standards based interoperability. We?ll then be able to tag our
product with XML, which is associated with open standards and interoperability
when our product does nothing of the sort.
How about using a non-profit organization, sponsored by many software
companies, to publicize the issue of software piracy, only to use its
enforcement branch as a basis for replacing your competitors? products with
your own (SPA?)?
How about a product that really is now probably the best in class, after they
truly spent a fortune to develop it to that point, and sell it below cost -
Microsoft Money 2003. That?s because all their other methods of beating the
competition, other than actually making the best product, failed.
Prior to Office 97, Microsoft?s office was relatively inexpensive, and not one
of the products was best of breed. With Office 97 several of the applications
were now neck and neck with, or best of breed, and the sum of the parts made up
a best of breed office suite. Since then, we?ve had two new office suites that
only offer feature and price bloat, but nothing really necessary. At least
they were nice enough not to change the file formats as they had in every
version prior to Office 97. Most of the competition has fallen behind. Part
of this is due to a licensing scheme where licensing for the suite is bundled
at a huge discount with licensing for the OS.
The entity for which I work is forced by M$ to buy two OS licenses for every PC
- every PC is covered by a site license that includes the OS because M$ won?t
acknowledge the license that we already have. We already have a license for
each PC, because each comes with an OS license, because the contracted
manufacturer won?t sell a PC without an M$ OS license (because M$ strong arms
manufacturers into a licensing deal where they agree to this in return for
discounts).
The settlement originally proposed by the Feds in the lawsuit against M$, the
separation of the company into two companies, one for the OS, and one for
applications, would have been the best remedy to deal with their illegal
competitive acts.
Maybe that was more than $.02
David
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