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Microsoft Stops Development Of Outlook Express 769

Posted by simoniker from the looking-out-on-code-freeze dept.
Jman314 writes "According to a ZDNet story, Microsoft will cease development of their Outlook Express email client. "The technology doesn't go away, but no new work is being done. It is consumer email in an early iteration, and our investment in the consumer space is now focused around Hotmail and MSN. That's where we're putting the emphasis in terms of new investment and new development work." says Dan Leach, lead product manager for Microsoft's information worker product management group. Microsoft's alternatives include, not surprisingly, the full version of Outlook."
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Microsoft Stops Development Of Outlook Express More

Microsoft Stops Development Of Outlook Express

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  • Read between the lines (Score:3, Funny)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:11PM (#6691602) Journal
    "The attrociously insecure program won't go away, but no new work is being done. It was our best attempt at writing a simple email client in an early iteration, and our investment in the consumer space is now focused around agents that will allow us to more effectively execute our SPAM campaign and strengthen our monopoly: Hotmail and MSN. That's where we're putting the emphasis in terms of new investment, development work, and worm targets that will give your IT guy an incredible head ache."

    • Re:Read between the lines (Score:4, Insightful)

      by billsf ( 34378 ) <billsf@cuba.calyx . n l> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:50PM (#6691909) Homepage Journal
      HotMail and MSN are spam by definition. I suggested at CCC Camp that all "no body mail + html is spam", explaining that it is not necessarily my idea and got booed. A happy note is one of the people that made this all possible (that is Unix ofcourse) showed support in this method while strongly balking at other filtering methods as 'censorship'.

      If you were there you know who i am and who was sitting next to me. It really is true that if html is not allowed as a 'mail medium' the spammers will not be allowed to show their presentations and/or direct you to dangerous sites. It is really that simple and if Outlook is out of the picture, spam has the great setback that has been a long time coming. This is a serious note BTW.

      • Re:Read between the lines (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Planesdragon ( 210349 ) <slashdot@castles ... .us minus author> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:58PM (#6691958) Homepage Journal
        It really is true that if html is not allowed as a 'mail medium' the spammers will not be allowed to show their presentations and/or direct you to dangerous sites. It is really that simple and if Outlook is out of the picture, spam has the great setback that has been a long time coming. This is a serious note BTW.

        You're wrong.

        Outlook is just one mail client. So long as HTML mail can be sent, it will be sent, and it will be used for spam--and for other things as well. It doesn't matter if every installation of Outlook suddenly vanishes tomorrow--there will still be HTML/MHTML mail, and there will still be spam.

        Of course, to remove HTML mail would require a level of effort such that a proper check on spam would be easier to implement.

        • Re:Read between the lines (Score:5, Interesting)

          by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @10:13PM (#6692045) Homepage Journal

          Of course, to remove HTML mail would require a level of effort such that a proper check on spam would be easier to implement.

          Most Outlook Express clients that are configured to send HTML are configured to send both text/plain and text/html, with reasonably valid tags. Most Outlook Express users also spell at least half Just flag as "junk" any message 1. that has text/html but no inline text/plain, 2. whose inline text/html content does not substantially match its text/plain content, 3. whose text/html content has a large number of comments or unknown elements, or 4. that, after deleting words not valid in any language the intended recipient speaks, consist primarily of a link whose content is an image to be retrieved via HTTP. These quick checks seem to work well as a front line of defense against junk e-mail, and SpamAssassin uses variants on them.

        • It may be true that Outlook is one mail client for those that don't want to mail online. Religion is stupidity -- agreed.

          Simply stated, all i'm trying to say is that if HTML is not allowed in mail, the husksters of today have lost a powerful tool. Do you know about 'one pixel images?' These, when used with Outlook can tell the UCE exploiter when you read your mail, how long you spent on it and if you read it again and when all this happened! Do you care in the least about your privacy online? "Would you tr

      • Re:Read between the lines (Score:5, Interesting)

        by macshit ( 157376 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [eprohtelggons]> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @10:53PM (#6692284) Homepage
        Really, you got booed??? That's a bit bizarre...

        I've filtered pure html mail for a long time -- it's a highly effective way to get rid of spam, and nobody I know (even my non-computer-adept relatives) is so clueless as to send pure-html email.

        I've noticed recently that spammers are trying to get around this, not by putting their spam in text form, but by trying to disguise the html using multipart etc (it's still easy to automatically identify though).

  • they want to focus on webmail... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dcstimm ( 556797 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:11PM (#6691609) Homepage
    They think webmail is going to be more popular than imap, or pop3 mail boxes. So they are going to intergrate a Hotmail mail box into the next version of windows.
    • Yes.... I think they will call it.... I know! "Internet Explorer"!
    • If you like mail the real way, there is "Mutt" and other Unix mailers. "Webmail" is slow, unwieldly and totally insecure. Then you have little shits like Microsoft that actually dare to claim your mail their IP! Get a life and mail online.....

      • Re:they want to focus on webmail... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bofkentucky ( 555107 ) <bofkentucky@nospaM.gmail.com> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:36PM (#6691826) Homepage Journal
        I'll take 128-bit RSA over plaintext IMAP, POP3, and SMTP anyday. Joe Six Pack isn't sophisticated enough to use GPG/PGP or Client side certs, most ISP's don't offer TLS mail services, but that little lock icon keeps his pr0n, email forwards, and industrial espionage from being snooped by big brother.

        • Re:they want to focus on webmail... (Score:5, Funny)

          by Edgy Loner ( 44682 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:39PM (#6691851) Homepage
          Definately. As long as whoever runs the server is trustworthy. Of course Micrososft is pretty good in that regard -
          Oh wait, never mind.

        • Yeah, but what about the backend? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by gotr00t ( 563828 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @10:00PM (#6691969) Journal
          It is true that webmail usually has a frontend (the part that you see via your browser) that is secured with SSL, but the problem is, the server must recieve your message SOMEHOW. That is still through SMTP, and it is plaintext.

          You simply can't compare PGP to SSL because they are not used for the same thing. PGP is used for the secure transmission of the mail AND the final delivery, but SSL only protects the final delivery. To that extent, a lot of webmail providers don't even give you a choice to use PGP. Because the transmission is still through SMTP, and it is not secured by PGP, your information is not protected even if you use webmail.

          • Re:Yeah, but what about the backend? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Pharmboy ( 216950 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @10:19PM (#6692083) Journal
            Wait a second, webmail does not require SMTP/port 25 to send mail. Your client isn't sending mail. Its basically sending a form to the server, via a CGI process (perl or php typically) and the SERVER uses port 25 to actually send it. You only need port 80 for insecure and 443 for secure webmail.

            I block port 25 on my home windows and linux boxes simply because if I DO get infected, at least my box won't send out to anyone else on 25, regardless of what program is trying to do it, including the virus itself. I have not used stunnel to ssl my mail yet, but that is in the works. But I know I am not using 25 on SquirrelMail, and I am sure with any webmail server.
            • > webmail does not require SMTP/port 25 to send mail

              First, that's not what he said. He said "the server must recieve your message somehow," and that that was done with SMTP.

              Second, you are totally wrong. You need SMTP to send or receive mail.

              Here's an incoming message, if you had a Hotmail account.
              1. I send you an e-mail, from a "real" e-mail account.
              2. My SMTP server finds the MX record for @hotmail.com
              3. My SMTP server makes an SMTP connection to said server; sends message.
              4. Hotmail serve
          • You think UUNET or AT&T encrypts that traffic on transcontinental fiber runs? PGP is not a fair comparison but it is the least likely to be used by the general public. You can TLS/SSL POP/IMAP/Webmail all day long but that traffic is sent unencrypted over SMTP if it ever leaves your ISP's datacenter

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Great, just what I need, MORE M$ proprietary mail headers, HTTP extensions, and HTML tags.

    • They are wrong, especially if I can get CAKE working well. :-)

    • Web-based e-mail isn't for everyone (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ziegast ( 168305 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @10:55PM (#6692294) Homepage
      They think webmail is going to be more popular than imap, or pop3 mail boxes.

      If Microsoft lets its market share for desktop-based e-mail clients slip, it could be short-sighted.

      I use web-based mail at work (iPlanet/SIMS) and web-based mail (Yahoo) at home as my primary mail-reader. I have broadband in both locations and the responsiveness of web-based e-mail conpared to desktop e-mail clients is negligible.

      My work-at-home CEO has satellite at home. He can't use the web-based product because the interactive sluggishness from delay and packet loss would kill his productivity. SSH-tunneled POP works great for him because his local e-mail client (Outlook) downloads new e-mail in the background and sends messages out in the background while he is composing/reading mail quickly in the foreground.

      When I administered e-mail for a dialup ISP, the primary method our users preferred to access their e-mail was POP to Outlook Express or Netscape Messenger. It is painfully slow to browse through e-mail over a dialup connection. There are still millions of dialup users out there. They are the majority of users on the Internet.

      If people use wireless devices in the future, their experience will be more similar to dialup/satellite than broadband, and they'll demand a product that isn't web-based-only. Some of the ideas brought to light by Central [macromedia.com] or similar technologies could satisfy both broadband/fixed and narrowband/mobile users.

      Microsoft makes an excellent user interface for e-mail. They're good at that. Their enterprise/corporate customers may continue to pay for it. Other products like M2 [opera.com], Evolution [ximian.com], and Mozilla [mozilla.org] will help fill the consumer niche if they open it up. If it weren't for Microsoft's early monopoly bundling tactics vs Netscape Navigator (founded on a "beta/intro is free, production version costs money" business model), we might not have nor expect free browser and e-mail software. We're spoiled. If it weren't for security or playform supportissues, more of us Slashdotters might use Outlook Express.

      -ez

      PS: I lied. My primary mail reader is MH [uci.edu].

    • Re:they want to focus on webmail... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by EvanED ( 569694 ) <evaned@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @11:24PM (#6692420)
      The real downside to webmail for me is (are you ready for this?) it's on the web. I keep a backlog of essentially every email I recieve. I have things burnt onto CD from over 4 years ago, which is when I first had a non-webmail, non-AOL account. Unless webmail places start giving insanely larger starage spaces (say, 50 megs instead of 5) and/or offer a very easy download solution, they are worthless for general use. Add to that the fact that you have to be online (okay, I have cable, so that's not a real issue) with a good connection to read, and even with a good connection it would take longer to move things between folders, read past messages, search, etc. and webmail starts to look very unappealing. The only benefit for power users at least is that you would have all your messages whereever you go.

  • Does That Include Patches? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Myriad ( 89793 ) <myriad AT thebsod DOT com> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:12PM (#6691615) Homepage
    but no new work is being done.

    What's that sound? Ahhhhh, worm and exploit writers around the world can rejoicing...

    I they've got them to stop development.

    Blockwars [blockwars.com]: go play.

  • Good! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Roguelazer ( 606927 ) <Roguelazer@NOspAM.gmail.com> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:13PM (#6691620) Homepage Journal
    Maybe this will cause peopel to realize that Internet Explorer and Outlook Express AREN'T the only way to use the internet. With any luck, mozilla and its ilk should be seeing a lot more customers once the EOL for Internet Explorer 6 and Outlook Express 6 hits and Microsoft either A) Requires a new version of windows for new features or B) Requires MSN subscription, both of which are alternatives that home and small business users (and probably large business users too) won't want. So let's make sure we have a very user-friendly product with plenty of advertising, eh?

  • What? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quasar1999 ( 520073 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:13PM (#6691622) Journal
    Oh, ok... so what you're saying is we no longer have outlook express... it's now part of the OS and we can't de-couple them... it's an integral part of the OS... honest your honor!

    Seriously... They're doing with outlook express, what they did with Internet Explorer... except this time, they are bundling outlook functionality with their Web business, instead of their OS... Same shit different pile...

  • Great... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:13PM (#6691629)
    So OE will never be able to filter by header, forcing people to live with spam. It's just like IE - leave some critical, easy to add features missing, then stop development. It's like they're trying to annoy people into upgrading to a new version of windows to get the latest email client and web browser.

  • No more hotmail support... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BrynM ( 217883 ) * on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:14PM (#6691635) Homepage Journal
    There goes the best Hotmail client there ever was. Treat hotmail just like e-mail without paying for premium POP3 service. Oh well.

  • Bundling? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by toddestan ( 632714 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:14PM (#6691637)
    Does that mean they won't bundle an email client in Windows anymore? That's one good thing I see coming out of this. Hopefully a good, simple to use, secure, and free email client will be able to fill the gap.

  • Sad news... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by carlcmc ( 322350 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:15PM (#6691646)
    Don't start up your flamebait moderation yet. I think this is sad news. OE has been my favorite email client for a long time. It starts quick, has message rules etc, and is easy to use. Yes there are other clients, but I will miss it.

    Outlook is to large and too slow to start. I have a key on my keyboard for email, and I like to hit the key and have the results within seconds as opposed to tens of seconds.

  • More profit (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dj961 ( 660026 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:16PM (#6691651) Journal
    Cancelling development is obviously an attempt at moving people to either Outlook or Hotmail/MSN, either of witch would yield more profit for Microsoft.

  • I don't blame them... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by conan_albrecht ( 446296 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:17PM (#6691658)
    I support email for a few users, and by far, web mail is really nice (Go for IMP [horde.org]):
    1. It's the easiest to administer and support.
    2. In my experience, consumer/home users prefer web mail anyway.
    3. It's easier to secure. Just use HTTPS, which everyone knows how to use. No need for IMAP/POP3 over SSL.
    4. Users can access their mail through their browser (doesn't IE == internet? :)
    I'm no fan of MS, but I have to agree with their decision on this one.

    • Re:I don't blame them... (Score:4, Informative)

      by G27 Radio ( 78394 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:53PM (#6691925)
      I've been using webmail exclusively for a year now, so I agree. We use SquirrelMail [squirrelmail.org]. It's a great webmail program with tons of plugins (calendars, weather, spellcheck, translators, virtual domains, etc...) Most of our customers use it for access to their e-mail--though it doesn't stop them from using POP3 or IMAP clients if they prefer. Definately worth a look if you're interesting in providing webmail services. Oh yeah, GPL of course.

      One word of warning--many of the plug-ins don't seem to work well with the 1.4 series yet. You may want to stick with the 1.2 series for a while if you need a lot of the plug-ins. Otherwise, 1.4 works great and is a bit faster.

  • It seems many of the posters missed the last line (Score:4, Informative)

    by The Uninformed ( 107798 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:18PM (#6691662)
    The full version of Outlook is still supported

    Outlook Express is no longer supported

  • Alternatives... (Score:4, Funny)

    by quinkin ( 601839 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:18PM (#6691669)
    I am going to have to find an alternative program to soak up all those CPU cycles...

    Q.

  • Methinks it is bad.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr Reducto ( 665121 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:19PM (#6691673) Journal
    Who in their right mind would want all their email on MS servers?

  • Sucks! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by techwiz007 ( 698037 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:19PM (#6691674)
    I really liked OE, even though it had its plethora of security issues. It was not as bloated as Outlook, and believe it or not is a really good email client. Clean and simple enough so our older employees can handle it. I don't think I want to upgrade our workstations to use Outlook, should look for a good replacement. Any nice, powerful and free email clients out there?

  • Awww, that's too bad. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chromodromic ( 668389 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:22PM (#6691695)
    Well, guess who isn't stopping their development?

    http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/ [mozilla.org]

    Version 0.1 is still better than Outlook Express ever was. Anyone with any experience with the Mozilla products, especially Firebird, knows that each incremental version increase brings loads more functionality, features and options.

    So while I would shed a tear over Outlook Express going away, truth is, a rat's ass I do not give.
    • I must admit that Thunderbird is coming along nicely, but it is a pig in its current release. Maybe when it hits ver 1.0+ it will be up to speed, but for now OE trounces it.

      Who here actualy sets up OE for their parents/grandparents/whomever? Web based e-mail is perfect for those that are computer illiterate. The interface is familar, virus scanning is built in, and with a tweaked Mozilla install they are ad free!

      It is a pitty to see ANY software have it's dev cycle stopped. I used PMMAIL for OS/2 and sti

  • You never know! (Score:4, Funny)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:25PM (#6691719)
    The next thing you know...
    For immediate release:

    Microsoft today announced an immediate halt in development of their operating system, Windows. By leveraging innovative technologies, content providers streamline compelling enterprise solutions. The move comes after Microsoft's new research lab on Linux demonstrated to Microsoft management and shareholders that Linux is, indeed, a superior product to Windows.

    "Windows has been plagued with all kinds of bugs in the last decade or so," commented Microsoft chairman and chief software architect, Billy G. "By switching to Linux, we hope to eliminate problems with reliability and security in Windows, bringing stability to computing worldwide. We will begin the process of licensing all our code under the GPL, to allow the community to fully participate in the development of the world's best software, allowing Microsoft to concentrate on service and customization for specific enterprises."

    In an interview over the recent change, SCO CEO Darl McBride said, "Microsoft is infringing on our intellectual property rights by legally incorporating code invented, developed, trademarked, copyrighted and patented by IBM." When asked how Microsoft's move infringes on SCO intellectual property, McBride said, "I had a bad dream about a giant penguin going around eating everything." McBride was escorted back to the looney bin by two big black guys in pinstriped suits and dark sunglasses.

    Linus Torvalds was unavailable for comment at the time. However, spokespersons from HP, IBM, Novell, Red Hat and the Free Software Foundation expressed their respective organizations' desire to work with Microsoft to advance the quality of the software market.

    You never know... It might actually happen some day!

  • Just wait (Score:4, Interesting)

    by segment ( 695309 ) <sil@po l i t r i x . o rg> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:25PM (#6691720) Homepage Journal

    What if MS attempted to turn every single one of their programs into something like the lease-this-because-you-can-no-longer-buy-it. What would many do. Just because they've announced this means little. What they should be announcing instead of waisting everyone's time, should be, that they're going to reaudit ALL versions of Windows for security holes.

    That would impress me. I wonder what would MS do if everyone just got pissed and did some form of protest to the tune of "secure this now or we won't buy". It would be a sys admins nightmare to migrate machines over to other OS' but in the long run, it 'could' (note the could instead of unproven WOULD) save companies much needed dollars.

    As for the outlook article, to be honest didn't read it because I don't use it, nor does anyone in my company.

  • Mac version already long dead (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Y-Crate ( 540566 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:26PM (#6691733)
    The Mac version was last updated in.....damn, I keep on top of this stuff but it's been what...3 years since the last update? Microsoft has been slowly reducing the number of Mac apps over the past few years (it seemed to coincide with their new 'commitment' to the Mac around 2000 or so) Apple had no other choice but to put out Mail.app, to fill the gap. IE is gone, but everyone in the Mac community felt it was dead long before Safari came out - not getting an update for years at a time usually leaves that impression.

    Oh well, I guess it is a strategic move to isolate themselves for blame and constant embarassment over their inability to put out a secure app. Almost everytime "new, crippling virus" is mentioned, you hear "exploits a vunerability in Outlook Express" in the same sentence.

  • It may go away but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ebuck ( 585470 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:26PM (#6691736)
    So Outlook express will go away. I'm not going to shed many tears over it.

    Still, how long will it take before the users who download Outlook Express stop hunting around on the net and installing it? I still have people reaching around in their directory (or desk drawer) of important stuff installing horribly old versions of Netscape 4.x (where x is a very small number) so they can use it's email reader.

    Most of the users are bound to the one product they chose when they REALLY NEEDED it to work. During that crisis period, they put in the time and effort to get THAT product to work, and that's the extent of their software understanding. Microsoft may try to wash it's hands of Outlook Express, but I imagine a day (ten years from now)

    Hey, could you look at my home computer? It seems I have an email problem.

    Really? I thought that email was totally autoconfiguring on your system!

    Yea, but for some reason, Outlook Express, says it can't connect to my Internet.

    Arrrggghhh....

  • Excellent Smithers! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cranx ( 456394 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:27PM (#6691742)
    Take away their free email program and they'll be FORCED to buy our commercial products! Ha!

    Quick Smithers, find the Mozilla development team and kill them all!

  • What are those crazy monkeys up to? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:27PM (#6691744)
    First they're cancelling IE, and now OE.

    It's like that memo making security "job #1" was real or something...

  • Predictable and a good thing. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by digitect ( 217483 ) <digitectNO@SPAMdancingpaper.com> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:31PM (#6691785)

    This seems a logical step given several factors:

    • Outlook Express is a completely different code base than Outlook. Twice as much to maintain means twice as many bugs.
    • No more free ride. As Linux (and other Free OSs ;) begin to become competitive, the scrappy, free software on the perimeter of the main encampment is the obvious first target to eliminate to save money and cut losses.
    • Plenty of people are hooked into Outlook Express that a forced migration at this point will bring plenty of profit. At least more than none, although probably the target audience already has MS Office, but maybe not all.
    • In moving to some global control / central services scheme (.net, Longhorn, whatever) there's no point in trying to migrate some basic client package.

    I was an OE user for rather a long while and it had always seemed a bit nicer interface than Outlook proper. In maybe three years, I never had a data failure and it was quite reliable. Obviously the security angle was, er, non-existent (anti-secure perhaps) but it felt fast and mostly did what I told it.

    But I'm an Evolution user now, so OE won't be missed. Better for all of us, if you ask me.

  • No terrific surprise. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tambo ( 310170 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:33PM (#6691798)
    Consider: What does Outlook Express allow one to do? Well, for no more than the cost of Windows, the user gets an email client that allows them to fetch data from a POP server and store it on their hard drives.

    Now think about Microsoft's "next-gen tech" initiatives. Let's see, there's three, really:

    1) Blackcomb, which promises an explosion of metadata (read: data bloat) and phenomenal background cycle usage (read: mandatory hardware upgrades) for not much user benefit. (Have you looked at how much metadata is stored in the "Properties" pages of a Word XP document? Good grief, there's tons. Now how often do you use that? Roughly... never? Bingo.) Not really any connection here.

    2) Trusted Computing/Palladium. Again, not much connection here. (Interesting that when MS says it's interested in protecting copyrighted works, it means media distributors' copyrighted works... not the copyrights that you own regarding the email that you write, which is open for pilferage by Outlook worm du jour.)

    3) Hailstorm. DINGDINGDING! We have a winner.

    An' it goes a little somethin' like dis:

    Microsoft has realized that it can't easily sell many more upgrades of Windows or Office. The "more stable Windows" line has been exhausted from re-use. The Office paperclip is already in 3D and can't be improved more. So, to continue reaping monopoly profits, they want to move sofware to the rental model. They drop the initial price on their software, but bill you monthly for the rest of your life, and for the same software.

    Now - how can it do that? If they give you the software, they can't prevent you from using some dirty h@x0r trick to crack it and then stop paying. So, they retain much program functionality on MS's servers. You no longer own a functional copy of Word. You just own an input/output web interface to their copy of Word.

    But while they're on this track - while they're pushing you to surrender your software to MS - why not convince you to surrender your documents to MS as well? They'll store the data on their servers. It will always be accessible (so long as you pay your licensing fees like a good little serf), and you don't have to worry about hard drive crashes or data loss (disclaimer: no guarantees, understand; you waived your rights through shrink-wrap.) So now you can't switch to some dirty pirate-OS like Linux without forfeiting all of your data.

    Of course, Hailstorm died a PR-debacle death, because users aren't quite that stupid (or more accurately, tech-savvy users anticipated their treachery.) But Microsoft's dreams of rental pricing didn't die. After all, they have no other real improvements to offer for their core products.

    Hence, no more Outlook Express.

    Where's the tie? Easy. OE allowed you to store your mail on your server. But of course, Hotmail and MSN store your data on their servers. It's prepping you for the day when all of your data is on their servers.

    Welcome to the future. Prepare to be assimilated.

    David Stein, Esq.

  • Don't really care (Score:3)

    by loconet ( 415875 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:37PM (#6691832) Homepage
    I'll admit having used outlook express - it is fast and there already (/me hides) .. This news comes just in time after having switched to Thunderbird [mozilla.org], a great, nice, simple, secure e-mail client with lots of potential. For what i need, it's perfect.

  • Nothing new. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:38PM (#6691840) Journal
    They had already announced that they discontinued development of IE.

    My predictions:
    Soon they will put a Hotmail icon on the standard Windows desktop which will be protected from removal or hiding by the EULA. It will come with the newest Media Player or MSN Messenger. Future versions of Windows will be cheaper, at least the home edition, but the product activation will require an ongoing passport account, which, two years later, will require a monthly membership fee.

  • Big Deal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Deathlizard ( 115856 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:39PM (#6691846) Homepage Journal
    Frankly, Other than adding Outlook's stupid "Block all Attachments" Feature and setting the Security Zone to restriced by default, Something that should of been done in the first place I might add, OE hasn't changed that much since it was introduced.

    The only thing that OE really needed was a Spam filter, but since Blue Mountain Arts forced MS to throw that into the toilet there isn't much else it needs that can be added.

    It's simple and it works well, and it all most people need.

  • smells fishy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cr@ckwhore ( 165454 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:41PM (#6691858) Homepage
    Here's an interesting thing to note ... ever try removing Outlook Express after installing Outlook?

    "Hey, I've got Outlook ... why do I need Outlook Express installed?" --uninstall

    Here's the catch ... when you launch Outlook after removing Outlook Express, you'll get a message indicating that Outlook NEEDS Outlook Express in order to view email. Go ahead and scratch your head for a few minutes on that one, but its true.

    SO ... how is it then, that Microsoft can continue to offer Outlook while stopping development of Outlook Express? (Perhaps some merging of the development resources going on there.)


  • Everyone needs an SMTP mail client of some kind. Now that OE is dead, we're bound to see the rise of 3rd party mail programs given that Outlook is expensive and not everyone likes hotmail.

  • think long-term, people (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BigGerman ( 541312 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:54PM (#6691936)
    They stop developing "conventional" email client because they don't need it.
    OE is simple and standards-based (pop, imap) client, works like a charm with Unix mailservers. Why MS would need it?
    Instead, they do their standard embrace-and-extend trick -
    customer is fed up with insecurity of traditional email and spam?
    Fine, we are going to have new mail client built right-into the OS, working some proprietary protocol against Exchange backend (for corp users) or against monstrous SQL Server / .net/passport clusters for consumers.
    No need to download another client just like with the browser. And guess what - in a little while SMTP/POP3/IMAP will become a niche, because everyone will have MS supermail on their desktops.
    They are trying to do to email what IIS was going to do to the web - quetly and gradually replace open protocols.
    Apache stopped IIS from monopolizing the web. What is going to stop this one?

  • Sadly, Outlook Express was better than Outlook... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Phs2501 ( 559902 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @10:00PM (#6691970)

    Sadly, Outlook Express was far more standards-compliant than full Outlook. And that's not saying much.

    Here are just some of the things that annoy the hell out of me about Outlook:

    • Cannot use newsgroups without going through an Exchange server. Exchange servers really frell things up, as I'll explain below:
    • Exchange servers modify the Message-IDs of news messages they get via NNTP! This completely breaks threading for standards-complient stuff. This doesn't affect Outlook, though, because:
    • Outlook uses a completely different (and weaker!) threading system! One that's not compatible with standard References: or In-Reply-To: headers.
    • For more fun, Outlook uses the same stupid incompatible threading system when going through Exchange for email! Want to view your lame friend's messages threaded in mutt? If they use Outlook, too bad. Particularly bad on mailing lists.
    • Ironically, if Outlook connects directly to a real SMTP server to send mail and not via the Exchange backdoor, you get real In-Reply-To headers! *boggle*

    Everyone in my office uses Outlook except for myself and a few others. I've wanted to set up a newsserver to replace our current policy of cc'ing random people when trying to have a discussion. Sadly, the only Microsoft solution would have been to use Outlook Express to connect to the news server. (No, installing Mozilla/Thunderbird on everyones machines and training people to use it is not an option, sadly.)

  • As Microsoft announced an end to Outlook (Score:4, Funny)

    by Siriaan ( 615378 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @10:12PM (#6692030)
    A bright sun shone above the horizon. Songbirds lilted sweetly in lush green trees, bunnies danced across the meadow, and all disease came to an end. A Microsoft spokesperson said in a press conference - "You know folks, from now on I think everything is gonna be ok."

  • They're doing everyone a favor, really (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tkrotchko ( 124118 ) * on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @10:13PM (#6692046) Homepage
    They're opening up the market for small, inexpensive email clients. I mean, if the alternative is full-blown office (to get Outlook), or web email, then it seems there's a big hole between the $0, lousy Hotmail interface, and the $400 MS Office interface.

  • This is great news for OSS (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Trolling4Dollars ( 627073 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @10:14PM (#6692053) Journal
    One thing that still tends to suck these days is mail access. With the exception of Evolution and Mozilla Thunderbird, the e-mail experience is really lacking these days. Web mail is nice, but it's still really slow unless you are dealing with proprietary packages. MSN and Hotmail suck compared to what could be if the right combination of technologies were used.

    With the departure of Outlook Express, a void will need to be filled and I believe that this opens the door to new alternatives. If there was a project that combined web mail, a mail client and an IM client to produce a seamless user experience no matter which component is used,I think it could blow away anything that MS has to offer. Couple that with a solid backend and a new spam proof protocol and I think e-mail would be revolutionized. As it is e-mail doesn't scale well at all when it comes to content. It should be media rich, but capable of being thinned down to be able to work within a simple text only interface. That's something that is totlaly lacking right now. There's lots of work to be done to turn e-mail into something universaly useful and valuable. Let's take this opportunity to start something now.

  • More "embrace and extend" borg crap (Score:5, Insightful)

    by raw-sewage ( 679226 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @10:37PM (#6692193)
    This is a stretch, but I think this is another Microsoft ploy to own email: let's kill Outlook Express, then concentrate on getting everyone on Outlook, MSN and/or Hotmail. Unfortunately, between their marketing and obscenely huge cash reserves, they might be able to pull this off. Or at least, let's get an identifiable critical few hooked on these systems and change the standard to Microsoft proprietary. Microsoft would be so happy if it could start to whittle away the number of people not using Microsoft products to read their email.

    I wish that a few large, influential companies would stand up to Microsoft and call them on their lame business strategy: closed, proprietary standards that keep everyone else out of the game. Microsoft simply does not compete on innovation. Why doesn't this get more press? Why does the main stream media not criticize Microsoft more often? They appear to be going out of their way to keep data formats and protocols both closed and unnaturally complex just to keep other systems out of the game. I think that alone says that they recognize that their software is not superior!

    I work at a large Fortune 100 company and we use Lotus Notes as our groupware. I hate Lotus Notes: it has the worst user interface I've ever encountered, is fairly buggy, and just generally kind of sucks. Everyone at work wishes we'd switch to Outlook! In my mind, that's the only advantage Lotus Notes has: it's not Outlook! That's all Microsoft wants: a few large influential companies to use Outlook so they can play the vendor lock-in card, start changing standards, and have another Office-like monopoly on their hands... but with email.

    The Internet Explorer monopoly is scary enough. Now Microsoft is working on email. Microsoft is working very hard at destroying the openness of the Internet; they want to own the Internet.

  • Feature in OE that I can't find in any client (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mikeage ( 119105 ) <slashdot AT mikeage DOT net> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @10:43PM (#6692222) Homepage
    Ok... I still use Outlook Express... for one reason. I have several IMAP servers (yes, all over SSL), and in OE, I have them set to syncronize all messages, without having to go offline. I know this is not exactly the main use of IMAP, but I like it-- I don't have to download a message each and every time I view it. No, it's not a speed (bandwidth) issue-- but a latency one. Even over my home network, if it has to hit the server for each message, it's not as fast as if it's cached locally. Evolution doesn't do this, nor does Thunderbird, so far as I can tell. Or do they? And if so, how?

    P.S. Please no "feature = bug in OE that I can't find anywhere else" replies. There's enough threads with those already.

  • Wha? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Valar ( 167606 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @11:43PM (#6692503)
    says Dan Leach, lead product manager for Microsoft's information worker product management group

    Coincidence? I think not. Ok, so there's spelling, but since when have I cared about that?
  • As some commenters have noted, while OE certainly can be blamed for a lot of security gaffes, in usability terms it really has been excellent software.

    I've never spent much time with the Windows version, but the old MacOS version was superb, and I know a bunch of very savvy tech folks -- people that were generally of the Linux & Free software persuasion -- that swore by OE/Mac as their favorite mail client.

    However, it has been obvious for a while that that software probably didn't have a future. Outlook Express was never updated to be a native OSX application, so you had to run it in Classic mode. That was enough to start turning away users, but I understand that even still it's fairly popular.

    But I digress.

    If you read between the lines here, it's not just OE that's being dropped. Consider this quote from the article:

    "IMAP is just not a very rich protocol," Steve Conn, Exchange Server product manager, told ZDNet Australia during the company's Tech Ed conference. "The great majority of people used Outlook Express because they weren't on a LAN environment, and Outlook was just too fat for them."

    In other words, Microsoft saw OE as their IMAP client, and so by dropping OE, they are also abandoning the IMAP mail protocol. In spite of what Mr Conn says, IMAP is a very rich protocol: it allows you to maintain multiple mail folders on the server, it allows you to keep your mail client configuration on the server, and in principle it allows you to store arbitrary files on the server.

    All of this allows the user to have great mobility: leave the office and you can have all the same data available at home, or at school, or while travelling. All of this, in other words, is open competition for Exchange.

    This isn't just abandoning OE, this is vendor lock-in. Microsoft is trying to steer us towards a world where you have two choices for mail access: get a Passport & sign up for MSN Hotmail, or buy a copy of Office and use Outlook to connect to your corporate or ISP provided Exchange server.

    There is no room for open protocols in this worldview, and so no room for alternative servers (Sendmail, Postfix, Qmail, Exim) or clients (Mozilla, Thunderbird, Mail.app, Pine, Mutt, Eudora, etc).

    The death of an open protocol is the real headline here, but both the journalist & the story submitter seem to have missed it.

    • The death of an open protocol is the real headline here, but both the journalist & the story submitter seem to have missed it.

      Just to make it clear, I did notice Microsoft's casual dismissal of IMAP, but I didn't mention it for journalistic reasons. I reported the facts; this discussion inteprets them. I do agree, however, that stopping OE development is stupid and replacing it with Hotmail is really stupid, but I left that for the reader.

      So you see, there can be journalistic neutrality on Slashdot!

      • But dropping the protocol is the story!

        If things do go according to my interpretation, then the relevance of open protocols like IMAP, POP, and SMTP will be diminished, and the end result will be that all non-Microsoft mail software (both client & server) will be crowded out. This is a doomsday scenario, and I don't expect it to be quite that bad, but it seems obvious to me that this is what Microsoft is pushing for.

        I think it would have been fair to press them on this angle in the article, as the significance of this is far greater than the mere discontinuation of a particular piece of software. But it sounds like you did put some thought into this, so I'll accept that it was your call to make... :-)

  • In related news.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stinky Glen20 ( 689507 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:16AM (#6692664)
    Stocks in all major Antivirus vendors were down on the news.

    CEO's of major Antivirus vendors were unanimous in advising their shareholders that "there's nothing to worry about - there are plenty of other Microsoft products out there..."

  • Kinda funny... I mentioned this article.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by magores ( 208594 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:21AM (#6692686) Journal
    ... to a few people at work.

    --COO shrugged... Eudora
    --CEO shrugged... Eudora
    --CTO shrugged... Eudora
    --Project Manager #1 Shuddered... (Sky is falling!!!)
    --Project Manager #2 shrugged... (But he shrugs at everything, so not sure what it means.)
    --IT guys #1 and #2... "Out what? Servers are up, everything running fine. Nothing is Out."

    Basically, it seems to be a big, "Yeah. So?"

  • Well, they would say that ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mostly a lurker ( 634878 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:42AM (#6692786)
    "IMAP is just not a very rich protocol," Steve Conn, Exchange Server product manager, told ZDNet Australia

    ... considering that, bad as the IMAP support in OE is, the IMAP support in Outlook is even worse. If they are going to try to move users onto Outlook, they had better try to build the impression that IMAP is intrinsically bad, not that MS (deliberately or otherwise) has a terrible implementation in their flagship email client.

  • This is an evangelism opportunity (Score:3, Informative)

    by hirschma ( 187820 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @01:06AM (#6692853)
    A friend of mine decided to toss Outlook Express a couple of weeks ago (this headline makes him feel better about that decision). He asked me what to use.

    I steered him towards Mozilla. He's very happy with it.

    Even more important is the fact that he cannot believe how good something FREE is. Yeah, free as in beer, but he gets the Free thing too.

    My guess is that he'll be a lot more receptive to a Linux desktop in the future. Mozilla makes a good preview of Free software.

  • Advertising and Banners (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sh0rtie ( 455432 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @06:31AM (#6693787)

    Maybe they are dropping it because users wont accept advertising in their email client (OE did for 1 version but was quickly dropped perhaps people complained?) but if its on the web (in a browser) they can advertise all they like (look at the mess that what they call hotmail now)
    then they can get advertisers to focus on associating users email accounts with user names and all that lovely personal information (courtesy of your "msn wallet(TM)" and "msn passport(TM)", tie that to your machines GUID [extremetech.com] and msn's cookie [pc-help.org] stealing [securityfocus.com] exploits [slashdot.org] (notice hotmail.com does not exist anymore and is now a msn subdomain) and voila , you have WindowsXP 2004 marketing machine where you are not the customer any longer, you are the product and you will even hand over 299$ (cost of XP) for the privilege while assigning all your IP rights [microsoft.com] to them and their "partners".

    Microsoft isnt a software company, its a marketing company that creates software.

    not that it will affect me or you but you have to feel sorry for the sheep that have no idea whats going on.

    cheers

  • Saw this coming... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hankaholic ( 32239 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @06:58AM (#6693889)
    ...well, almost.

    A few days ago when the Paul Graham article was posted to the frontpage, I was thinking about the fact that MS hasn't implemented Bayesian filtering (or any powerful filtering) into OE.

    The three possibilities I came up with were:

    MS wanted to give Hotmail/MSN a competitive edge over other ISPs and mail services.

    MS didn't consider it worth the money to add Bayesian filtering to OE.

    MS is using Hotmail as a testbed for various versions of filtering software; by making changes and observing user behaviour, they could determine whether people generally agreed with the filters, thus roughly gauging their effectiveness. Since changing source on a central server is a faster method of deploying updates than forcing users to require a new client, Hotmail is the perfect place to test new filtering schemes.

    Honestly, I thought that either the first or the third was true. Here, it turns out that the first and the second are true.

    I wonder what ISPs will be left to do? I suppose they'll either have to seek out a cheap/free mail client for Windows, or switch to webmail.

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