From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tim X Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: OT -- An extremely dumb curiosity question? Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 23:13:36 +1100 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <874ppsao3z.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au> References: <1171042016.496262.136420@a75g2000cwd.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1171197697 24610 80.91.229.12 (11 Feb 2007 12:41:37 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 12:41:37 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Feb 11 13:41:31 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1HGE1H-0002G0-K1 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 11 Feb 2007 13:41:27 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1HGE1H-0001a7-17 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 11 Feb 2007 07:41:27 -0500 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!headwall.stanford.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!feeder.news-service.com!hitnews.eu!tudelft.nl!txtfeed1.tudelft.nl!multikabel.net!feed10.multikabel.net!hwmnpeer01.ams!news.highwinds-media.com!feeder1.cambrium.nl!feed.tweaknews.nl!138.199.65.86.MISMATCH!sn-xt-ams-06!sn-xt-ams-08!sn-post-ams-02!sn-post-sjc-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.93 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:Wlj/LzzcB10pnQ3tWL91bSjkLOk= Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Original-Lines: 44 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:145480 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:41084 Archived-At: Galen Boyer writes: >> >> What prevents you from using Emacs for email, even though your >> correspondents use Outlook? In other words, what's so special with >> Outlook that Emacs cannot cope with? > > Not whom you responded to, but for me, to configure Outlook I needed to > know the server and security configurations as well as if it supported > pop or IMAP and all of those questions were things that got the email > admins suspicious of my activities and brought questions from my bosses > and so I would shy away from it. They did not want to hear that I was > using a different client than everybody else. > > The other reason is that the most important thing about Outlook is the > calendar and I had no idea how to get Gnus to deal with that. The calendar and MS exchange are probably the strongest reasons people are required to use outlook in a work situation. We have tried to avoid this for some time, but have recently been instructed by management to trial MS exchange because none of the other calendar systems seem to work as well or provide as good an interface as the MS Exchange and Outlook combination. If the company is not using MS Exchange as the mail server, Outlook is a fairly dumb client with calendar support not much different in fucntionality to emacs calendar/appt modes. While outlook can work with other calendaring systems, such as meeting maker, the quality is poor and reliability seems shabby with frequent problems and unreliable syncing with outlook and PDAs/Phones etc. Outlooks calendering support is notoriously unreliable if you don't also have MS Exchange running - at least it use to be 4 years ago. It would seem that this is an area MS has done very well. Few of the currently available alternatives seem as reliable and feature rich, unless you want to pay a hell of a lot. Tim P.S. There is an open source calendering system - I think it is based on mono. Can't remember the name, but last I looked, it seemed interesting (depending on your view of mono, novell and all that political stuff!) -- tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au