ready ... grab a cup of coffee
Microsoft offers two email systems, why?
So you feel spoilt for choice.
OE is free with Internet Explorer
Outlook is 'bundled' with Office, although you can buy it separately, costs an arm to buy.
OE doesn't have the task and contact management capabilities of Microsoft Outlook, nor can it handle e-mail other than Internet mail.
Outlook is Microsoft's premier messaging and collaboration client. It is a stand-alone application that is integrated into Microsoft Office and Exchange Server. Outlook also provides performance and integration with Internet Explorer 5.5. Complete integration of e-mail, calendaring, and contact management, makes Outlook the perfect client for many business users.
Outlook helps you find and organize information so that you can work seamlessly with Office applications. This helps you communicate and share information more effectively.
Powerful Inbox rules enable you to filter and organize e-mail messages. With Outlook, you can integrate and manage e-mail from multiple e-mail accounts, personal and group calendars, contacts, and tasks.
When you use Outlook with Exchange Server, you can use workgroup information sharing and workflow communications, group scheduling, public folders, forms, and enhanced Internet connectivity.
Outlook is designed for use with the Internet (SMTP, POP3, and IMAP4), Exchange Server, or any other standards-based communication system that supports Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI), including voice mail. Outlook is based on Internet standards and supports today's most important e-mail, news, and directory standards, including LDAP, MHTML, NNTP, MIME, and S/MIME, vCalendar, vCard, iCalendar, and full support for HTML mail.
Outlook also offers the same import tools that are offered with Outlook Express. This enables easy migration from other e-mail clients, and offers further migration from Microsoft Mail, Microsoft Schedule+ 1.0, Microsoft Schedule+ 7.0, Lotus Organizer, NetManage ECCO, Starfish SideKick, Symantec ACT, as well as synchronization with leading Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), such as the 3Com Palm Pilot.
Outlook Express is the e-mail client that is included with Microsoft Internet Explorer. Outlook Express is designed for home users who gain access to their e-mail messages by dialing in to an Internet service provider (ISP).
Built on open Internet standards, Outlook Express is designed for use with any Internet standard system, for example, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3), and Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP). It provides full support for today's most important e-mail, news, and directory standards such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension Hypertext Markup Language (MHTML), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME), and Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP). Full support ensures that you can take advantage of new technologies as well as seamlessly send and receive e-mail.
New migration tools that automatically import your existing mail settings, address book entries, and e-mail messages from Eudora, Netscape, Microsoft Exchange Server, the Windows Inbox, and Outlook make it easy for you to quickly take advantage of all that Outlook Express has to offer. The ability to receive mail from multiple e-mail accounts, as well as the ability to create Inbox rules, helps you manage and organize your e-mail.
In addition, full support for HTML mail enables you to personalize your messages with custom backgrounds and graphics. This makes it easy to create unique, visually powerful messages.
There is no OE7 ... to use IE7 mail button, you will have to add it.
Vista Mail replaces OE, but you won't get it for XP, and is a free alternative to Outlook 2007 as it now has some 'addons' previously missing.
Windows Mail is the next iteration of this product. Although it is absolutely a “version” of Outlook Express, carrying with it many visual similarities to the Outlook product, Windows Mail is fundamentally a different application.
Although Outlook Express is tied to Internet Explorer, Windows Mail is more tightly integrated into the OS. This may well be serving the purpose of delineating the product from its predecessors as well as making it more difficult for antitrust lawsuits to be filed against Microsoft for “bundling” products into its OS. Windows Mail is not designed as a plug-in or addition to Internet Explorer, and though it is very much its own application, it is now a fundamental component of the OS itself.
Microsoft clearly designed Windows Mail with awareness that users have become savvier in terms of their technical proficiency, as well as their depth of knowledge about Internet-based threats. Out of the box, the following features are enabled:
• Phishing Filter
• Junk Mail Filter (SmartScreen)
• Integration with the Internet Explorer Restricted Sites zone
• A trigger to warn the user when an application attempts to send mail “as” the user
• Threat attachment filtering These options can be viewed and managed via the Security tab under
Tools|Options.
Source =
www.microsoft.com
There are, of course, other email clients, such as, Thunderbird and Opera has its own built-in email program.
