Outlook Rant

I think I have established that I use Outlook a lot, and I have been using it steadily for several years. I began using Outlook probably with Office 2000, though I may have been using it for email with the 97 version. I had always preferred the built-in email client that came with Netscape's classic web browser up through version 4.0. I think Netscape finished with 4.9 before selling out to AOL which did nothing to really improve the browser. I was using 6.0 for a while, and I think I might have downloaded 7.0, but by then I had given up. I had a computer at work with Outlook on it, so I started using Outlook at home to keep standardized. Later on when I quit buying refills for my Franklin Planner, I went looking for ways to adapt the Franklin method to Outlook.

In all this time of using Outlook, I really can't believe how little the functionality of the program has actually been improved. Outlook 2003 added some pretty colors and the ability to flag a message, but I still maintain that none of the developers use Outlook and they don't realize how frustrating it is to have already bought it and then you need to spend even more money on add-ins to make it useful for anything more than an email client and a very basic task and calendar display.

I want to rant on some email features or lack thereof. First off is the lack of a real security mindset. Outlook either ignores security or takes it to extreme levels. This morning I was reminded of how stupid this is. I got an email newsletter with links in it. When I went to click on a link, Outlook told me that links had been disabled and I have to click the Information Bar to turn them on. When I click the information bar, I get three options, one of which says "Turn links on (not recommended)". Excuse me, BUT THIS SENDER IS ALREADY IN MY SAFE SENDERS LIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't understand how it can make sense to Microsoft to add a sender to a safe sender's list and still disable links until you manually enable them. What is the point to having a safe sender's list? I may explain my method for dealing with spam in another post, I won't take the time here.

Also, for some reason, some of my emails have the message that says "to protect your privacy, some images have been turned off" and you have to click the info bar to show the images. Perhaps I should google this one, because I don't know what the point is when again, the sender has already been placed in my safe sender's list.

This isn't part of Office per se, but annoying nonetheless. When a program wants attention, the window will flash. We all know that. But why can't programmers set up a routine so that if you acknowledge the program once, it will leave you alone for a few minutes? Norton is the worst. Anything Norton does constantly notifies me that Norton is doing something, so that anything else I try to do becomes painful. Any window I'm in keeps flashing to inactive and the Norton window flashes my taskbar. Since I keep my taskbar hidden, this always seems to happen when I need to do something at the bottom of the page and the taskbar keeps hiding it.

I guess we'll have to live with it until either I learn to program or somebody else comes up with something better. Speaking of which, I remember back in 1998 or 1999 when I was on the Bash Microsoft bandwagon. Sun seemed to be leading the chorus, along with Oracle and everybody else. We all spoke of how shoddy Windows 95 and 98 were and how Microsoft is keeping down everybody else.

Suddenly, I woke up and realized that nobody has come close to doing what Microsoft has done. Nobody was producing a comparable product. I stopped complaining at that point.