Trying to figure out a stream in banning one email client or another is no easy
job. As soon as somebody rises up saying
Outlook is bad, somebody else comes saying it's good and the other one is bad.
And the story goes on and on.
On one hand, email clients like Outlook Express and (even more) MS Outlook do
a really good job when it comes to user
friendliness. What email client allows you to use more options on the agenda,
bell ringers, flag wavers and contact managing
tips than MS Outlook?
The ease of use perfectly molds on human indolence. That means I would never
question about Microsoft Outlook being or not a
good email client if it comes together with my Office pack that comes together
with Windows that comes together with my
computer.
Here is another red flag: MS Outlook is not free as long as I'm paying for my
Windows license. This should count when
choosing an email client.
Moreover, everything is so easy to install with those cute wizards, and installing
sessions are ready within minutes.
Until... well, until I spend enough time online, using email, starting to receive
viruses, worms and other creatures that do
bad things to computers. If you ever had to do one of the following when using
Outlook or Outlook Express:
* try very hard not to click on a message subject that looked suspicious; anyway,
not without using a small trick (that
used to work for me): pressing Shift, selecting the suspicious messages and then
hitting Del,
* try hard not to select some very good and very important messages together
with the suspicious ones,
* accept phone calls from extremely upset clients accusing you of infecting their
computers with God knows what worm
(personally got in trouble with BugBear),
* working on an extremely low system because an efficient AV is doing its job
scanning, updating, warning, locking etc.
* delete all your Outlook contacts in order not to become infectious for friends
and clients in case your computer
somehow got infected,
...then you know what it's like. Both Outlook and Outlook Express, while different
applications, with no related history,
have security as their weakest link. And that's why some people switch to other
email clients that are said to be more
secure.
It is true that most worms are today Outlook dedicated because Outlook has both
more users and more security holes. It is
also true that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates set security as a top priority back
on 17th January 2002 (it's been almost two
years by now). While I don't mean to ban Outlook or Outlook Express, I'd like
to choose the best for me, and the best doesn't
seem one of the fore mentioned, at the moment.
